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Can we talk about that for a few minutes? I feel certain that stories are the future of your business too, but we’ll save that discussion for a later time. I mention it here in hopes that you’ll keep it in mind as we talk about your advertising as it moves forward.
If we take a peek back at history, up until the time of Gutenberg, stories were the primary information delivery mechanism. From the very first graphical carvings on walls, through the development of language and on through the 15th century, stories informed us and bound us together. Once Gutenberg’s printing press came into being however, stories started to take a back seat as a “media” delivery channel. While the printing press did much to liberate knowledge from behind the walls of church and state, it also helped to relegate stories to the back shelf. Stories, as they existed then as a communication tool, as a way to pass on and understand legend and myth, became too expensive to print.
As institutions started to develop to control the flow of information, that information started to appear in smaller and smaller pieces. As the advertising models started to develop, they too had to obey and fit within the cost constraints of producing and publishing content or information. However, as advertising enabled brands in so many ways, it also harmed them in ways that are now starting to appear.
Start with the newspaper model, then the magazine, then radio, then movies, and then television. They provided the ways for business media to reach it’s desired audience. And each of those models of distribution controlled the size and extent of the business message. And nobody really complained. That was the way of the world. All of us in business made the best of it that we could. Some more so than others, and out of all of that, grew the concept of brands. A witches brew of advertising, marketing and pr. A house of cards really. Ask yourself this, other than a bathtub, is there really any difference between the top two ED drugs? How about the top two soft drinks? Or perfumes? Or seasonings? Or, well, I’m sure you get the idea.
As long as media continued to be expensive to produce and distribute, the spin doctors had to work their magic in whatever space their particular company or client could afford. But therein lies the rub ‘eh? A new distribution channel emerged and in so doing, ushered in a new wave of media. It didn’t happen overnight. It took time for technology and creativity to merge into tools like WordPress, YouTube, Flickr, Yelp and the like. But merge they did and now, as businesses, we face a new advertising landscape.
Just for fun, and to get a real perspective on things, think back 5 years ago. Where was YouTube? WordPress? Facebook? Twitter? Could you even have imagined? Think back 10 years. 1999. The year that Cluetrain Manifesto appeared, with its audacious statement, “markets are conversations.” Did your business even have an internet presence? Quite a few did not. Can you imagine not having one today? Traditional media still had control over your advertising 10 years ago. Not so any more. Can you even find more than one print magazine that addresses your particular industry? And if you do, how many people read it? How about TV? People now spend 13% of their time watching TV. They spend just under 12% of their time on the internet. But you know all of this right? The question is where do you put your ad dollars? Your ad efforts?
Internet advertising, banner ads and the like, are starting to sink like a stone as well. I tweeted yesterday about an effort by internet ad sellers to focus on awareness not click throughs. Good luck with that. So, if your traditional media advertising models are crumbling around you, where do you go? What do you do?
My feeling is that you realize that you have been liberated from the constraints of traditional media, and, you begin to learn how to embrace the advertising model that has been around since the beginning of man. The story. It’s no longer expensive to publish them. People love them. They relate to them. Some stories even go on to achieve mythical status. So too could one of your company’s stories.
But it won’t be easy for most companies to make this transition. They’re going to have to learn how to tell stories, from the upper levels of corporate management to the mailroom, how to integrate them into their culture. The good news is that they have some time to adapt, to get the people in place to help with the training and the transition. Traditional advertising hasn’t been laid to rest yet. But don’t get too cozy with that. Remember our earlier exercise? Where was twitter 5 years ago? Where will your advertising strategy be 5 years forward? Read any good corporate stories lately?
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