Chaos Scenario 2.0 – Bob Garfield Drops Another Classic Article For Advertising Age

I was a huge fan of Bob Garfield‘s article, Inside The New World Of Listenomics, which I blogged about here: Marketing Article Of The Year – Inside The New World Of Listenomics By Bob Garfield. I was wearing a smile all day after reading his latest article, Chaos Scenario 2.0 – The Post Advertising Age.
Here’s a snippet:
“How long it will be before order is restored is anybody’s guess. What is certain is that the Brave New World, when it emerges, will be far better for marketers than the old one. What is nearly as certain is that many existing ad agencies and some media agencies will be left behind. And the reason they will be left behind is their stubborn notion that they can somehow smoothly transition to a digital landscape.
‘It’s a very different kind of world,’ says Adam Thierer, senior fellow at the Progress & Freedom Foundation and author of ‘Media Myths: Making Sense of the Debate Over Media Ownership.’ ‘The problem is, the expectations are there to capture that mass audience that long ago disappeared. We are witnessing the gradual death of the business models that thrived in that age of scarcity.’
The value of TV, like the value of anything, is built upon the economics of scarcity. For decades, the source of highly produced entertainment was limited to three or four distributors — i.e., the major networks. Cable expanded the options tenfold, then, with digital cable, 100-fold. Now the internet promises to do so infinitely. Strictly speaking, as a distributor of goods, broadcast’s revenue structure should have collapsed long ago.”
Once again, Garfield lights many paths of opportunity for marketers. Too many marketers will read Chaos Scenario 2.0 as if it’s a disaster movie script for the advertising and marketing community. If anything, there’s nothing in Garfield’s scenario all that chaotic at all… unless you’re not deeply focused on what’s happening in the digital space with social media and trust economies.
You owe it to yourself (and to everyone you work with) to check out the article and forward it around: Advertising Age – Chaos Scenario 2.0 – The Post Advertising Age By Bob Garfield.