4 minutes & 22 seconds

is all you need to understand your future

If you think Facebook and Twitter and Flickr — social media — are a waste of your time and resources, you need to see this.

I bet you watch it at least twice.

 

If you earn money from an advertising-supported business, which includes all media, you might want to watch it one more time.

As Edward Boches at Creativity Unbound so aptly puts it: “Your consumer isn’t sitting around waiting for a message. For starters if she wants to know about you, she’ll either conduct a search of ask someone on Twitter. If she wants to be amused or entertained she’s got an iPhone and YouTube. And let’s face it; if she is watching TV, she probably has a DVR system.”

The days of pushing advertising, or information, or anything else, out are ending, and this is why I brought up the Obama campaign’s sophisticated use of directed email contacts a couple of weeks ago.

I control how often I hear from Team Obama, and I control the topics I’m willing to engage in with them.

I control what TV shows I watch, and when, and whether or not I view one 30-second advertisement or skip through all of them. And I will control what ads I accept on my mobile device.

I control the definition of “variety” for my musical taste, the number of commercials I will tolerate (probably 1) and I determine the relevance of the content I need from my “radio” — not you, and certainly not your VP of Programming.

If you think “media” can survive without, at the least, sharing control with consumers, you are dead wrong. It’s already happening.

It’s time to join the Revolution, rather than fight it.