The REAL Media Revolution - it's not what you think.

Remember 10 years ago - we continually heard that the internet was going to replace newspapers, that TV was going to become a streamed over the internet thing making cable, satellite and air broadcasting obsolete, we would be turning on our living room lights while we were coming home from our cars over the internet - and that Y2K was going to be a catastrophe.

None of that has happened! Let's look at the world as it really is today:

The myth of TV’s death:

- TV spending (major networks) as a % of total advertising spend in 2005 is within 1% of what it was in 1969, measured in relative dollars! In other words – it hasn’t declined a bit.

- Actually, TV viewing hours are continuing to increase.

- People today spend more on their TV’s than on any other consumer electronics product – and have on average one TV more than the number of people in the house.

Among young people, TV is even more than ever the dominant media. Youth TV viewing hours continue to increase. The peak of TV viewing has yet to be reached – as the baby boomers get older it will go up more.

People spend as much time reading newspapers today as they did in 1945.

Newspaper advertising has increased just as much as internet advertising over the past 5 years.

Maybe overall readership numbers are coming down as younger people tend not to read them, but it sure hasn't had much impact yet.

Time online has remained constant at an average 20 minutes/day/household between 2000 and 2005.

The fastest growing advertising medium for the past 5 years – and the one which will continue to grow the fastest – is the oldest, dating back to Roman times – OUTDOORS.

The moral of the story: NEW TECHNOLOGY DOES NOT REPLACE OLD TECHNOLOGY.

So what is the real revolution?

The REAL revolution is in our consumption of CUMULATIVE media.

In 1945 – 4.4 hours/day.

In 2005 – 8.8 hours/day.

CUMULATIVE means the increasing LAYERING of media – utilizing multiple media simultaneously.

As more of the world becomes literate and has access to TV, internet, etc. this will increase.

Layering might seem to imply that “universal gateways”, presumably via cable, phone lines or satellite, which have been talked about for a decade will become a reality. But this is simply not true, for three reasons:

- a simple trip to Best Buy will show that electronic devices simply do not interface with each other and manufacturers have no interest in moving towards compatibility,

- consumers neither want nor trust bundled providers,

- over 50% of the 200 million + VCR’s in the US are right now flashing “12:00” – because people won’t spend more than max 10 minutes to figure something out before they give up and move on – and simple, seamless universality is not even being worked on yet.

WE HAVE YET TO DISCOVER WHICH MEDIA ARE BEST AT ADDRESSING WHICH COMMUNICATIONS ISSUES.

We do know that advertising will adapt to changes in the media mix.

So - WHICH MEDIA ARE REALLY IN DECLINE?

There are only two forms of media which really are declining.

The first is due to marketing and management issues – RADIO.

Ground-based free radio is declining in North America because of the decline in relevance and quality of content and over-regulation. It’s as simple as that. Nothing to do with technology, nothing to do with changes in lifestyle – in fact, as people are spending more time in their cars, it really should be increasing. But by-the-numbers corporate style playlists and loss of personal connection have made radio bland experience – by being too safe it lost its resonance.

The second does come from technological change.

Face to face – or word of mouth – is in decline as it has been supplanted by the internet. The last face to face generation was the WWII generation – who joined clubs, associations, groups, etc. and interacted person to person in the community.

As an aside, but a relevant one, the QUALITY of human interaction is declining as a result of this change – the general decline in the “civil society”.

It is interesting to note, however, that the internet is the LEAST trusted media – less trusted than even a company’s own salespeople! This has interesting implications – TRUST is becoming harder and harder to attain – and sustain – in a society where there is so much mistrust.

FIXED PRICE VS. A LA CARTE:

If we agree that today’s empowered consumer ‘chooses’ to allow the brand into their lives and chooses what messages they allow in, we also must allow that increasingly the relationship is moving away from being passive to being an active choice – indeed, choice in a layered environment is paramount (as the music industry has reluctantly learned) and the era of bundled services at fixed prices is ending – the era of choice in unbundled services, at yet to be determined market prices is fast approaching.

The "A La Carte" era - the era of choice, and the era of layered consumption.

How does a marketing communicator break through? With a hammer?

No. Today's consumers aren't what our parents were - relatively trusting of authority, corporations and television as well as media in general. They believed what they heard on TV and read in the papers - and they believed the words of authority figures who they generally aligned themselves with.

If there really is a revolution in media today, it's not in the vehicles themselves - it's in the hearts of the recipients, who are armed with instant information, instant feedback from peers and trusted sources, instant comparative information, and more competitive sources than at any point in history. They have hugely effective bullshit meters with a low tolerance for messages that aren't believable, lack validity or try to manipulate them - and they can punish brands that let them down.

This, combined with the fact that today's consumers of simultaneous media will only choose to tune in to messages that (a) they directly ask for or (b) they allow to reach them because they connect emotionally or in terms of identity means that create demand through blitz advertising - we need to dig deeper - to engage.