Ryan Anderson dot ca

I think most people I know are like me in that they wish that given all of the negative news we hear every day, that we could do more to help.  More to make the world greener, more peaceful – in general, we want to do more change the world, but we’re not sure where to start.

My friend Faisal recently had the same epiphany – and his response was to create something that would not only allow him to make a bit of a difference, but to make it that much easier for everyone to do even a little bit of extra good for the world.

His idea was to create a plugin for your web browser called DoGooder, that allows you to alter the ads you see on any website, and instead display ads from charities, green organizations and advocacy groups.  It allows organizations to get their message out to a plugged-in audience, and on top of that, 50% of profits are donated to green charities.

Is making a passive donation to charity enough?  No, probably not.  But it’s a start, and more than that, a constant reminder to do a little more to make the world a better place, while doing a little to help organizations that are doing just that.

The plugin takes about 3 seconds to install, and works on most browsers.  Check it out at http://www.dogoodhq.com

Though we’ve been talking about it for years, the fact that the newspaper industry is circling the bowl is something that has seemed to escape many journalists and media academics.  Economic groups are taking bets on the next major newspapers to close up shop or go online-only.  The fact of the matter is that it’s no longer economically viable to print newspapers, and most people don’t care.  That’s not a great equation for saving your business.

The problem is that while newspapers are more expensive than they are valuable, the information they contain is vitally important to the public.  Blogs and on-the-spot citizen journalists pick up some of the slack, but in order to realize the responsibilities of the fourth estate, journalism needs to be a profession that comes with training, depth of knowledge and codes of ethics.

So, while I’m not an expert on the print media industry, these are a few ways I can see to fix the local newspaper industry.

1. Wean your customers off paper.  According to Business Insider, it costs twice as much to print the NYT than it would cost to send every subscriber a free Kindle.  Entice people to subscribe by offering each two-year subscription or renewal a Kindle, provided they take an digital-only subscription.
2. Stay hyper-local. If everyone who reads your paper can easily get their information from another (probably better) source, don’t waste money trying to break national stories.  Instead, focus on things that matter locally, provide analysis of the big stories nationally.
3. Send them somewhere else. People are still reading you for the news, so give it to them.  Provide a few lines of context to breaking stories, and link them to a number of other sources.  Sending them to another newspaper may seem counter-intuitive to advertising woes, but if the local paper can still be your subscribers’ windows to the world, they’ll keep coming back.
4. Bet your last dollar on digital. Not enough companies invested enough in digital five years ago when it could have made a difference.  Now’s the time you need to double down and make the investment in digital by surrounding your subscribers with the news in all of their digital channels.  At the same time, forget about the news cycle – it no longer exists.  People are used to getting news on-demand, as it happens – getting a paper in the morning and staying uninformed for 24 hours is a thing of the past.
5. Create community. The dawn of the hyperlocal community is here, and local newspapers are in a great position to build those communities.  They have the infrastructure, the advertisers, and the eyeballs necessary to make it work, but most have failed at creating something that people want to be a part of.  Combine that with the fact that community platforms are more accessible and affordable than ever, and the answer is simple.  Be part local guide and connector, and build up an engaged community, and it may just be possible to wrestle classified advertising revenue back from craigslist and kjiji.

The crisis of the newspaper industry is one of change.  Journalists in many cases view new media as toys, and their most vocal customers romanticize the tactile experience of reading the news as ink smeared on dead trees – the rest of the people don’t care enough to complain – they’ll gravitate toward the path of least resistance and get their news through Google News, blogs, Twitter, or any number of other venues that better suit their lifestyle.

In the end, if the newspaper industry is to be saved – something that I think is highly important to the future of journalism in general, something’s got to give.  Like any other species on the verge of extinction, newspapers will adapt or die.  Those who believe that newspapers’ intrinsic value will keep it around for ever will find themseleves comiserating with the type-setters and other obsolete industries that never saw it coming.

I started to really think about the value of social media versus plain old television ads recently when I made a major, high-involvment purchase – I bought a car.  I’m not a car expert, but I’m definitely someone who will do the research to make sure that what I’m getting is not only the best value, but is really right for me.  The experience was interesting, and I wanted to share it with you, not as a road map for whether or not social media influence is real, but as a holistic case study in product decision making from one person.

My search, like many others, I’m sure, started with Google, but I didn’t just search “cars.”  I had already narrowed down my search parameters to a certain type of car (5-door hatchback, because I’m just that badass) and a few brand options.  The interesting thing looking back is where those brand options came from.  Some came from friends (I have a few who swear by VW), some came from television ads (the Honda Fit commercial made it stick out) and some came from past experience (I’ve always been partial to Toyota).  One even came from product placement.  I can say with absolute assurance that the only reason we test-drove a Nissan Versa is because of its appearance on Heroes, and the fact that I wanted to yell “Blue Nissan Versa!” every time I got in.

After some preliminary research, my search moved into real life.  We visited dealerships, looked at cars, test drove a few, and further refined our search.  I called friends who were in the industry and asked their opinion, which I weighted much more heavily than that of my friends outisde the industry.

While I was narrowing down my choices, one of the most useful tools was one that I had come across on TechCrunch, called CarZen.  It allowed me to compare dozens of cars, side by side and rate them based on what criteria were most important to me.  It introduced me to a couple of new options, and helped to validate existing ones.

From there, I turned to Twitter, as I so often do, and asked the opinions of my social graph.  The opinions from this group ranged from “You should get an Aston Martin!” (that would be lovely, thank you) to very practical advice on which cars to avoid and endorsements based on personal experience.  All in all, I received about 40 responses, including one from Scott Monty of Ford, who told me about the Sync system, and predictibly, tried to convince me to buy a Ford.  When I pushed back and said that I had concerns about quality, he pointed me to a few sites showing the reliability of the Focus over the past few years.  In all honesty, it didn’t do much to convince me to buy a Ford, but it certainly improved my image of the quality of its vehicles.

In the end, I went with the Honda Fit.  Not exactly a stunning conclusion, I know, but the interesting thing for me, looking back on it is what the influencing factors were.  Social media informed me, but really did very little to influence me in the short term.  It was invaluable for answering specific questions, but it was better at steering me away from choices than toward them. In this respect, social media was more of a long-term influencing factor.  I would say that I’m now more open to Ford than I ever have been, which makes me think that every car company that wants to keep loyal customers should be doing exactly what Ford is in Scott Monty.

This exercise reminded me that influence comes from everywhere, but it surprised me to realize how much television influenced my purchase decision.  The Fit “Cavernous” spot stood out in my mind because of its simple proposition that happened to coincide with my main priority for the car, and the execution that set itself apart from every other car-driving-down-a-winding-highway ad.

Did I buy a car because of a TV spot?  No, but it was one of the many influencing factors on my road to purchase, and a good reminder that not all influence comes from the places we assume.  Any decision, especially complex ones, come from a variety of sources – some online and some off, some we control and some that we don’t.  As marketers, the important thing to remember is that rarely is influence a direct path, but rather a circuitous series of nodes, all making their way to an ultimate end.  All we can do is make sure we’re on those nodes, informing and building loyalty.

6am – your alarm goes off.  You awaken to a song streamed over the web, and based on your musical preferences and the day of the week.  You fumble, reaching for the skip button, to listen to the day’s top headlines from your news aggregation application.  The clock gives you the weather report for the day, makes suggestions for what to wear, and reminds you that your first appointment is at 9:00.

In the bathroom, you shower and shave, and add a note to your family’s collective shopping list via the bathroom computer that you need more toothpaste.  In the background, an application has already sent electronic coupons to your phone.  As you step onto the scale, your weight and body fat percentage are sent to your lifestream, altering your online workout schedule slightly to accommodate a slight weight gain over the past couple of weeks.

You head down to the kitchen for breakfast, and add a few more items to your shopping list.  You read the rest of your news at the kitchen table on your e-book reader, wirelessly sync your laptop and phone, and head off to the office.

When you get in the car, you find notifications that your friend has sent you a new playlist of songs he thought you’d like, and a crowdsourced website tells you where the best time and place will be to fuel up that day.

When you arrive at the office, you check your communication timeline, a conglomeration of personal and professional messages sent to you from your social graph through any medium.  You notice that a friend has an art opening that night, so you check your wife and children’s calendar, and seeing that they are free, you add the event to yours and notify them.

Your job is different that it was a few years before.  You collaborate with larger teams, most of which are spread across the world.  Projects are managed through an online system, and all documents are stored within the system.  Software is almost exclusively web-based now, with the exception of high-processor applications like video production and 3d rendering.  You communicate with colleagues through a video instant messaging system that allows group meetings, one-on-one exchanges or broadcast messages that will be added to a timeline.  Email is still part of the organization, but it is primarily used for contracts and purchase orders.

At lunch, you leave the office to run a few errands.  As you walk down the street, your GPS enabled phone alerts you that a friend of yours is in the neighbourhood.  Since you both have your status set to “available,” you call him to meet up for lunch at a nearby cafe which was recommended through your mobile device.

On your way back to the office, your phone once again notifies you that one of the items on your shopping list is available for well below regular price at a store you’re near.  Checking the price, you decide to stop in and pick it up.

After the day is done, you head back home, but first you need to pick up something for dinner.  Before you left work, you checked into your online meal planner, and selected a few favourites based on your mood and how much time you had to cook.  You sent the suggestions to your wife, who narrowed it down to salmon with asparagus and rice.

Knowing that you were out of salmon and low on rice, your shopping list automatically added the ingredients to your list on your mobile, and based on your location, route, best prices and user reviews of quality, directed you to the best store to do your shopping quickly before heading home.

Later that evening, at the art opening, you tell your network via your mobile device that you’re at the gallery, and find out that one of your friends has a colleague in the same business as you at the same event.  He introduces you remotely, and you meet in person and talk about the exhibit.  When you part, you add each other to your respective networks wirelessly, and you tag him as a friend of your friend, and a potential business partner.  This tagging system lets you control the flow of information, separating your personal and professional life seamlessly.

When you return home, you unwind in front of the television for a little while, selecting a couple of shows to watch before bed.  Broadcast television is still around, but you watch most of your television on-demand through your internet connection.  You select one network show, and an independent comedy show from Australia produced by a couple of writers in a small studio.  While you watch, you discuss the show with a number of other loyal fans, some of whom you’ve added to your network.  Your personal ratings and feedback on the show actually affect the content of the episodes, so you always make a point to watch and discuss it.  Since the user feedback module is through your remote control, your wife, a recent convert to the show, gives her feedback along with you.

Your ad experience is the same through all shows, and streams information and commercials based on your profile, and what you’ve requested.  Since you’re planning a trip to Italy in the summer, ads for luxury travel packages are common.

Before bed, you head to your computer to pay a few bills.  The system has identified a cheaper banking plan for you, and noted that you keep going over your mobile minutes, and suggests a better plan.  You click ‘accept’ and it deals with all the paperwork for you.  You check your account where you’ve been saving for a new boat, and read some suggestions from fellow bankers on how to save money faster.  One of the members is a chartered accountant, and makes a suggestion that will help you reach your goal a month earlier.  You contact him through the network to say thanks, and to set up an appointment for financial planning.

Before bed, you set your alarm and wakeup preferences, updating your status to “away,” and taking you off the grid until the next morning.

This was a bit of a thought exercise for me, but I don’t think that it’s a social media future that is too far off. In fact, most of this technology already exists, at least in some asynchronous form.  Here, the recurring themes are a single, unified social graph, ubiquitous access to that graph, integration across all platforms, location-aware services, and above all, non-intrusion.  From a marketing point of view, the ads were all served to an individual as information, not as a mass message.  As a result, they were accepted, and not filtered out.  Above all, the entire experience was unobtrusive and simply part of life, rather than another thing to do or website to check.

Social media has a long way to go before it’s a part of everyone’s life, but as the technology for mobile, entertainment and home computing continues to improve and become more connected, a future of social media as an enabling tool in our daily lives, and as a means of connecting in real life is very likely.

As many of you know, I’ve always been involved with the local arts community.  Sadly, with the demands of a day job being what they are, I’ve not had as much time to devote as I would like – but the one piece of involvement that I have held onto is being on the board of the Ottawa Fringe Festival.

The Fringe, for the uninitiated, is a theatre festival where local, national and international performers converge, and over 10 days, put on over 300 performances (many, many more in some markets) and 100% of their box office takings go to the artists themselves.  The festival itself serves to organize venues, schedules and publicity, but the actual content of the shows is left completely up to the groups that are lucky enough to be selected.

Now, you may think that a not-for-profit theatre festival taking place in Ottawa where all of the box office proceeds go to the artists must be rolling around in thousand-dollar bills and diving into silos of gold boullion.  The reality, however, is that any charitable organization needs to squeeze every last cent they can out of a dollar, and reaching new audiences by buying full page newspaper ads is not even a consideration.

That’s why this year, the festival will be making a major change in focus to include a number of social media marketing initiatives to reach new communities, make new friends, and build the visibility of the festival both locally and on the international circuit.

Blogging. It’s a no-brainer, but you’d be surprised at how many organizations don’t blog about what they’re doing.  We made the conscious decision this year to hire a community manager who would blog not only about what we’re doing, but about what our performers are doing, what our sponsors are doing, and what our audience thinks of the shows.  We have two community managers manning the blog this year, and no doubt other staff and volunteers will get involved as the festival kicks off.

Commenting & Feedback. We started allowing comments on individual show pages last year with some trepidation.  We were afraid of companies trying to sabotage one another, performers complaining about bad reviews… and there was not one issue.  This year, audience members are free to review shows directly on the site, for all the world to see.

Facebook. We’ve had a Facebook group and fan page for a while, but this year, thanks to Refresh Partners, we also have an application that allows users to search for shows they want to see, share it with their friends, and buy tickets directly.  When you select a show you want to see, it sends a notice to your newsfeed, letting friends know the shows you’re attending and when.

Flickr. When you’re dealing with an event that is fairly hard to explain in words, photos are a powerful way of conveying emotion.  As always, we have an official Fringe photographer, but this year, we’re lucky enough to have a photographer who is doubling as community manager and reaching out to local photography enthusiasts to set up a public photography contest for the Festival.  Every day, a winner is chosen from the public Flickr pool, their photo printed and posted at the Fringe tent, and linked online – and the photographer submitting the best photo of the festival, as chosen by our judges, is awarded a gift certificate for dinner at a local restaurant.

Video. A few years ago, wrestling with the idea of video was next to impossible.  Connection speeds, technology, processing tools and know-how was far out of reach, but now that it’s trivial to take a video on a cell phone and upload it to Youtube, there’s no reason for organizations NOT to integrate video into their web strategy.  This year, in addition to gonzo interviews from the festival we’re partnering with local startup Eventbots to place a speaker’s corner-style video booth at the Fringe Courtyard.  Videos are going to be posted on the Ottawa Fringe site, on Facebook and on Youtube to give people a first-hand account of what the Fringe is about.

Real Life – the ultimate social network. At the end of the day, the festival is about art and people – and that’s something that can ultimately only be experienced in person.  Our goal this year was to put ourselves out there, and make some friends.  To solidify those friendships, we’re holding a Social Media Wine and Cheese on the first Saturday of the festival (June 21), where we can meet with members of the community, discuss ways that we can better engage with local communities and improve visibility for the upcoming years.  If you’re an Ottawa blogger, and want to attend, just shoot me an email to ryan (at) ryananderson dot ca, and I’ll give you some more details.

In theatre terms, what we’re doing is a bit of a social media dress rehearsal.  Some parts have been sloppy, some have been surprisingly polished, but the organization has learned every step of the way and sometimes, that’s the way you have to do things.  At the end of this festival, we’re hoping to have a block of clay that we can shape into something that will last for years to come.

If you’re in Ottawa, I hope you’ll join us at the Festival, running June 19 – 21 in the heart of Downtown Ottawa.

After a far-too-long winter in Ottawa, we’ve finally emerged from our igloos and thawed our Molson Canadians just in time for the return of Third Tuesday Ottawa, which will be held on Monday, May 5.  That’s right – it’s about topics so ahead of their time, it’s being held the day before.

If you happen to live in Ottawa, be sure to head down to the Clocktower at 575 Bank Street (downstairs), and see yours truly debating shiny new objects in public relations and which ones we should be paying attention to along with the distinguished Colin McKay and Brendan Hodgson.  Here’s the official blurb:

“It seems that almost every day, we hear an announcement of a new social media tool, social network or open standard that the inventors tell us we soon won’t be able to live without. At this month’s Third Tuesday Ottawa, we have a panel of Colin McKay, Ryan Anderson and Brendan Hodgson to lead a discussion of which social media tools are most useful and which are just code looking for a reason to be.”

So, we’re going to try to acheive the optimal level of drunkenness (obnoxious, but not quite beligerent) and try to get to the bottom of all those new and fun toys to see what’s fierce and what’s a hot mess.

The full details are on the Meetup site at http://publicrelations.meetup.com/84/calendar/7816548/.  It should be a fun time, and you might even learn something… I hope you can join us.

Thanks to Joe Thornley for continuing to bring us all together for a great event!

There’s been some debate in the social media PR world recently about whether or not we can really profess to advise clients on reaching clients through social media if we ourselves are not on the bleeding edge.  Specifically the question being asked was “do we need to be on Twitter in order to be effective PR people.”

I’m of two minds on this.  On one hand, there are plenty of PR people who have far more knowledge about the profession than I that are not on Twitter.  Does that make me better than them?  No, but it does mean that I understand an increasingly important side of public relations on a level that they can’t achieve from anecdotal accounts of what it is and how to use it.

On the other hand, I wouldn’t trust an electrician who didn’t have lights in his house… why should I expect clients to trust my opinion on a specific aspect of social media if I’ve only ever heard about it and visited the “about” page?

As I’ve said before, PR isn’t about the tools, but the new tools that are available to us every day of the week are changing the game so drastically that if we’re not on top of what’s happening in that arena, there’s no way we can be expected to provide our clients with a full understanding of the environment their brand is operating in, and that means either missing opportunities that would have been a perfect fit, or convincing them to throw money at everything that sparkles along the way.  Either way, the client loses.

It doesn’t mean that we have to spend our entire day on Twitter, Facebook, Friendfeed, Second Life or whatever the next big thing that comes out tomorrow happens to be, but it is our responsibility to at least engage with these communities, assess the tool fairly, and understand how it will affect current and potential clients.  Otherwise, we’re trying to fix the wiring while we’re working in the dark.

Bonus link: Todd Defren’s excellent post on why PR folk should be using Twitter.

I’m admittedly a little tardy on this, but a few weeks back, RichardatDell tagged me in a meme that asked five questions about the Cluetrain ten years later. It’s taken me a bit of time to put together a meaningful response, but here are my answers.

1) What does the cluetrain manifesto mean to you?

The Cluetrain Manifesto to me signaled the birth of common sense in business communications – the first principles from which almost all of the current writing on blogging, social media and connecting with people online has stemmed. At the time the book was published, I was still taking marketing at university, learning how to yell at consumers, but very little about how talk to people. The Cluetrain was a great wake-up call for the industry to remind us that a) consumers aren’t idiots; and b) the way we’re consuming media is changing drastically.

As RichardAtDell writes, the book has a very grim outlook on the future of business, which I think is vastly overstated, but the point is well taken. The Cluetrain Manifesto is about being human in order to interact with other humans. In many ways, it’s saddening that this had to be committed to paper.

While I don’t profess to be an expert on hypothetical history, my feeling is that had the Cluetrain never been written, we would be light years behind where we are now on critical thought about engaging directly with customers online and being social rather than spending more effort on foisting unwanted messages on captive audiences.

The danger of the Cluetrain is taking it as gospel rather than criticism. To me, trying to change your company radically based on new media fundamentalism is as silly as trying to run your company by any other business book alone. The power of the Cluetrain is to use it as a lens to evaluate how your company interacts and use the theses to improve what you’re doing honestly – not as an infallible guide for any business.

2) Which companies have best implemented the cluetrain manifesto in your opinion and how were they effective?

I don’t know that there is a company around today that could totally live up to the expectations set by the Cluetrain, but there many have taken the spirit of those 95 theses to heart in their marketing.

Dell is the obvious example of a major corporation that has found real value in adding a human element to their marketing through their Direct2Dell blog and the Ideastorm site, and I think they’ve proven that in order to get that value out of going social, you need to make it part of your business practices, rather than just an addition to a laundry list of marketing tactics.

Microsoft (a client) is also a good example of empowering, or at least, allowing employees to blog freely and interact with end users and developers – their clients. When something goes as much against the grain as letting every employee talk to the public, the fact that a company as large as MSFT has done so much to make it happen says something.

3) In thesis 57, the cluetrain manifesto states, “smart companies will get out of the way and help the inevitable to happen sooner.” In light of that thesis, is encouraging employees to use social media and blogging a good idea? Is it really effective, when an employee is encouraged but not directed?

Effective is an interesting word to choose in a situation like this. To me, encouraging employees to blog on their own is a smart move, but in reality, it’s unlikely to directly drive more business. The benefit of such an exercise is much more indirect. Employees that are closer to the community they’re serving, who feel more ownership in what they’re doing, who are forced to organize their thoughts and improve their communication skills.

To really be effective in the traditional sense of the term, however, direction is definitely required, but should be looked at more as an overall business direction than blog direction. If an organization is well-managed and a blogging strategy has a clear sense of purpose, then the benefits of knowledge leadership, branding and communicating directly with customers can be achieved through some work. However, if a blog is approached with a “get me one of those” attitude and corporate bloggers are left to fend for themselves with no clear goal in mind, the results will most likely be unfavourable.

4) How can a company encourage employees to use social media, and empower them to answer customer questions and learn from customers?

There are a few main stumbling blocks that come up when employees feel pressure to engage in social media, but don’t know where to begin. First is the “what do I write about” syndrome, which is common for most first time bloggers. The second is more of an institutional problem – the fear of failure. Customer service failures typically happen in private – on the phone or by email. But social media failures happen in front of the world.

However, both of these problems can be solved with an effective blogging strategy, training, and management buy-in and understanding. Strategy to establish a set of first principles that employees can look to for a compass, and training to let them know what to expect. Beyond that, it must be made clear that it’s okay to fail (at least in small degrees), and that making a choice based on that strategy and training won’t inadvertently end in their dismissal.

5) Do all employees want to talk with customers? If not what percentage want to internetwork and converse

No. Not all employees want to talk with customers. Not all employees want to write. Not all employees want to engage in community. Every company has people like this, and the percentage is going to be different in every company and every industry. You can’t force social interaction – you can merely encourage it and provide the tools and the support to do so. The good news is that every company should have some employees that want to be active in their networks, and who want to connect those networks to their work.

If you don’t have people like this, then my feeling is that you’re either not paying close enough attention, or you haven’t hired the right mix of people.

So, those are my answers. I’ll keep this going, and tag a few people I’d like to hear from. I’m going to tag a couple of Twitter friends who I know will have great answers: Dave Fleet, Ed Lee and Brady Gilchrist. Can’t wait to hear what they have to say!

As marketers, it’s easy to lose perspective on how the content we create affects the people we are talking to.  In many ways, we’ve been trained not to even think about it and view marketing as the unwritten contract price of media subsidization.  The old way of thinking is that we create ads, and the audience owes it to us to watch our ad as payment for the show they’re watching or the article they’re reading.

In reality, the consumer owes us nothing – quite the opposite.  Great marketers get that, and build their marketing, or better, their business, around the idea of giving something back to the user.  The question becomes – what is the role of the marketer in creating content?  We used to be the host of the party, who would, in exchange for the invitation, spend 20% of the time publicly patting ourselves on the back.  Now, that role has changed, and many interactive marketers moved to creating destination sites or social networks based around their brand.

Before making strategic or creative decisions, you need to decide this interaction.  Most brands want to create the playground – a social network, a virtual world.  They put up a few swings and a see-saw, and expect the world to come and play.  The problem is that a playground is only as much fun as the equipment within it, so other companies make the jungle gym, but put it in an out of the way place that requires people to go out of their way to get their, assuming that their content will attract people far and wide.

These tactics have some validity and can work occasionally.  But the most strategic marketers combine the playground and the jungle gym together, and provide the tools to the community to make it what they want, rather than prescribing the experience for them.

Twitter is an interesting example of this.  On its own, Twitter is nothing at all – an empty, unlandscaped lot.  The reason that they’ve been successful where other, similar but more complicated services have failed is because they gave the community the tools to build the lot into whatever they wanted.  Through the Twitter API, the community created desktop and mobile clients, games, competitions, visualizers, tools and much more.  As a result, the playground is owned by the community because it was built by them.

As marketers, the best thing we can ask for is to have consumers interact with our brand in a meaningful way.  What we have to realize as we transition into a new phase of communications is that we can create playgrounds or we can create jungle gyms, but it’s the community that’s going to be what decides if it’s worth playing in.

I was in NYC last week, and got to spend a bit of time chatting about advertising with one of my favourite New Yorkers, Noah Brier.  Of course, we talked about the way media consumption is changing and what it means to the traditional view of advertising, and one of his comments really clicked with me.

I won’t attempt to paraphrase, but his point was that advertising has always been about media ownership.  That is to say, advertisers paid to own a small piece of the media that could be used to carry their message.  Buying an ad in the New York Times is the rough equivalent of owning a portion of a page – it’s yours to do with as you please.

This was valuable because the media was controlled by a small number of people and corporations.  Media was scarce, therefore it had value.  Now, thanks to the web, anyone with broadband and the inclination to do so can be a media owner.  Sure, a tumblog probably doesn’t have the reach of the Times, but it has the potential to, just as a YouTube video has the potential to exceed the viewership of a prime time network show.

When you’re selling media ownership in a world that’s giving it away for free, two things happen.  First, as supply approaches infinity, value approaches zero.  Second, the number of choices that any one person has keeps getting higher, and as a result, their individual tolerance for noise goes down.  People now have the luxury of consuming media on their own terms, and if they can’t get something the way they want it from one source, they can get it from another.

Of course, none of this on its own is completely groundbreaking, but one of the nice things about talking to smart people is that it often leads to small moments of clarity, as this did for me.   Hopefully it did the same for at least a couple of others.  If not, go read Noah’s blog… it’s always good for a dose of clarity.