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With the end of the Mayan long count calendar about to occur
in three days, a lot of people are concerned about the world as they know it
coming to an end. While apocalyptic
premonitions have been a regular occurrence even into modern times (who could
forget the memorable non-event known as Y2K?), when it comes to cataclysmic
changes taking place, I’ve got news for you…You’re too late. Ever since the advent of the Internet, the
ways in which people all over the globe work, communicate, play, shop and get
their news has been radically affected.
As time goes on these changes have actually been accelerating. Let me count the ways.
1. Shop
til You Drop!
With the holiday season upon us,
not even Santa is immune from the Internet.
I mean, who needs eight tiny reindeer when you have Amazon and
EBay? Why fight your way in and out of
the mall when you can point and click your way through your shopping list, your
Christmas card list and have your presents shipped overnight? Have you seen people wandering the aisles at
Walmart staring at their smartphones?
They aren’t texting. They’re
comparison shopping online. When you
realize that back in 2002, consumers in the US spent $42 billion shopping
online and in 2011 they spent $162 billion, the fact that more people are
spending more of their discretionary income online than ever before is plain to
see.
2. The
Only News That’s Fit to Print
Newspapers have been a dominant
source of information for more than 550 years.
Ever since Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press back in 1454,
the printed word has not only been a source of comfort to the populace, it has
also been a source of revenue to publishers the world over. The problem is that since 2000, which was the
high water mark for traditional publishers, those figures have been dropping
ever since.
According to a recent Mashable.comreport:
·
In
2000, newspapers peaked at $48.67 billion in revenue. This came entirely from
print -- the National Association of Adertising did not track online ad revenue at that time, but we can
assume it was a minuscule number.
·
In
2001, it started dropping. Revenues dropped from $48.67 billion to $44.305
billion, a 9% decrease year-over-year. This was during the time of the Dot Com
Bust and the related recession, so this is no big surprise.
·
During
2002-2006, print advertising revenues hovered between $44 and $47 billion.
·
Around
this time, the NAA also began tracking online ad revenue. At the peak in 2005,
combined ad revenue reached $49.435 billion, with $2.027 billion of it coming
from online sales
·
Then
the floor completely caved in. In 2006, newspapers made $49.275 billion in
total revenue. In 2007, it was $45.375 billion. In 2008, it dropped to $37.848
billion. In 2009, it plummeted all the way to $27.564 billion.
Newsflash: In four short years, newspaper advertising revenue
dropped 44.24%! The old newspaper
model is simply not going to be market-viable as we head deeper into the
digital age. News blogs (such as Mashable) and online reporting are the future
of journalism.
3. Has Madison Avenue Lost It’s Mojo?
3. Has Madison Avenue Lost It’s Mojo?
Of course, print media isn’t the
only thing that has taken a hit since the turn of the century. Traditional broadcast avenues such as network
television, cable television and radio have also seen their revenues decline
sharply. The Yellow Pages, once one of
the dominant forces of local advertising clout has seen usage drop from a high
of 15.2 billion searches in 2002 to less than 11 billion searches in 2010.
(Statistics gleaned from Searchengineland.com report entitled: Are Yellow Pages
Toast
So, is it a coincidence the rapid
drop in readership, viewership and listenership being experienced by traditional
media should so closely parallel the rise of the Internet as a multimedia
superstation? Or has Madison Avenue
simply lost its mojo? Some mainstream
marketing professionals think so.
I’m
reading The Future of Advertising article
in FastCompany, good stuff
– but it reminds me of a constant voice in my head when I meet with my agency
clients. You know, the one that screams, “Ouch,
maybe that approach worked in the 90′s but does he really think this same
approach is going to win the client’s business?”
It
also reminds my agency friends they need to seriously re-think the role of
advertising in the new world of Web 2.0, digital being front and center,
develop and demonstrate innovative use of the social map, and frankly stay in
the game of constant game-changing. Some will survive, while others are
going to need to find their mojo, and not just by learning new approaches, but
by redefining what it means to be in the business of advertising in the first
place.
(Sheri writes about behavioral science and
neuromarketing insights and consults with leading brands on effective
application of these insights for product and marketing development. Her work
has been featured in B@B, Direct, Target, CRM News, Online Media Daily, the New
York Times and the Boston Business Journal.)
Being
an advertising professional myself, I can relate to this vibe. The problem is that the majority of ad
agencies are still stuck in the 1990’s.
By that I mean that they continue to push the media that built most ad
agencies, which boils down to traditional advertising. As a result, a number of agencies, including
those on Madison Avenue are having increasing trouble in retaining clients due chiefly
to poor ROI as traditional media continue to slump versus digital media.
4. Has
Ma Bell Had Her Apron Strings Shortened?
Remember when there were no cellphones and the only
thing you could do with a phone was talk?
Remember when Bell Telephone ruled the roost and long distance charges
were billed at whatever the market would bear.
Well times have changed for the better for consumers and businesses
alike when it comes to communicating via phone.
The telephone monopolies now share their positions with the cell phone
companies and other 3rd party players offering Voice Over IP phone
service. Products like Magic Jack and Vonage have put a big dent in the armor plating
of ATT and the others Baby Bell giants.
Even the postal service has undergone dramatic
changes. The US postal service has to keep scaling back because of the
reduction in mailed letters and documents. Its costs keep going up because they
now mainly have to handle packages and of course they have the unions to
contend with. Email has grown to huge proportion
of written communication and is now the defacto way that most modern societies
communicate. The Growth of texting has had a huge influence on the population,
since text messages often get read when emails are ignored and cell calls are
relegated to voice mail. It’s become such a problem that texting behind the
wheel accounts for thousands of car crashes a year and tens of thousands of
surprise cell phone bills to unhappy parents.
5. Our
Ever More Wired World
If you think the past
ten years has changed the way in which we live, work, shop and play, wait until
you see what the next five has to offer.
Everything from wearable computers to autonomous vehicles to robots that
can see, hear, smell and talk are already on the drawing board or under
development.
Far from having to wait
until 12-21-12, what the vast majority of the populace hasn’t realized is the
fact that the world as we knew it ceased to exist shortly after Y2K. The question isn’t whether this is going to throw
a monkey wrench into the works. It is
simply a matter of how we as a species are going to deal with a rapidly
changing world.
Carl
Weiss is president of W Squared Media Group, a digital marketing agency based in
Jacksonville, Florida. He is also
co-host of Working the Web to Win, a weekly online radio show that airs Tuesday
at 4pm Eastern on Blog Talk Radio.
