The mass media aberration: What's old is new again

After I posted you must unlearn what you have learned yesterday, I entered into a mind opening conversation with Brian Clark that started on my blog and then went over to email. Brian helped me to realize something that I had been missing.

The new rules really aren't new.

Brian (and others who also commented and sent me emails) helped me to understand that from 2,000 years ago, nothing fundamentally has changed. Many generations ago, people communicated with each other and sold stuff (chickens perhaps) at the town square. Even 100 years ago communications was real and personal and authentic. You asked the pharmacist in your town to make you up a potion to cure your ills and you bought your linen at the local dry goods store. Personal opinions mattered.

Instead of making everything "new," the Web has brought communications back full circle to where we were 60 years ago. On the Web you can finally communicate again in the way that people respond to. What people respond to, and the way they make purchase decisions, really hasn’t changed at all.

The Web is a huge town square and blogs are like people who venture into the town pub. People communicate and share ideas and products are sold.

OK, so what's different then?

After World War Two we had a huge aberration in the form of mass media. As people in the United States focused on just three television networks as the primary way they made decisions about soap and cars and fashion, the world of marketing and PR morphed from being personal and authentic to being generic and message driven. Instead of personal communications, mass media was the "new" and communicators (like me I would admit) went a little silly trying to adapt.

So then what happened?

The whole Madison-Avenue-driven (and PR-reinforced) focus on mass media made perfectly sane people stop communicating and instead become kooky with interruption-based advertising to the masses. Even niche B2B technology marketers adopted the mass media concept and dumbed down their offerings into flexible scalable solutions for improving business process and then advertised the "solutions" in generic business magazines, hired expensive PR agencies, and sent massive direct mail campaigns to convince people that they had a problem that technology can solve.

Watching the new TV show Mad Men reminded me how we've really only been doing mass marketing since the 1960s or so. We built up a big TV-centric economy in just a few short decades and now, thanks to the Web allowing us to communicate again, we're breaking down the TV-centric economy even faster than we built it.

Yes, we still need to unlearn what we've learned in the last half century.

But rather than everything being "new," it's more like we're just going back to the way it was before mass culture made us kooky and silly.

Thanks again Brian for pointing me here. You were right all along.

As long as I'm writing about the post I did yesterday I would also like to add that while I do think that Web marketing is making communications "new" again, there is still room for the tried and true. As Kevin Grossman says, "Traditional marketing and PR is still viable and should be included in your business plan (to what degree depends on your business, target market, etc.)" I agree with Kevin that a mention in the Wall Street Journal is extremely valuable. And I also agree with Matt Gentile that PR remains a people business. "Meeting the reporter (in person) find out what they are writing about and tailor your pitch. Have some fun with the new media, but don't forget the basic principles of PR."

Comments

[Kelly Rusk]

Although it may be an old way of thinking, it's still new to anyone who's been doing marketing/PR in the last 40 years, so you're not really wrong or anything!

[Glenn Nicholas]

I think the 'old' principles of marketing are still at the wheel, however there have been two big changes down in the engine room, introduced by the web. One, the web dramatically increases the size of the addressable market (before the web, a communication channel with global reach was effectively out of reach, now it is free). Two, the tools used for PR and marketing have changed radically.

The old principles of marketing remain the same, what people respond to has not changed. So good copywriting matters, measurement matters etc.
However the new tools - keyword research, content marketing, search marketing, email marketing, affiliate marketing - are radically different from the old tools. Using the old mass media (print and broadcast) is very different to using the new mass media - webcast.

Don't sell yourself short with semantics - your call on the new rules of marketing and PR is spot on.

[John Mallen]

I have been in the PR business for more than three decades, and must say there are few times I have been so impressed with leading-edge, practical information as I have with “The New Rules of Marketing & PR.”

I discovered it a short while ago on some blog. I’ve been reading it over the past week of travel, during which I drew on the “new rules” to hurrahs from the clients I was visiting. One rallied to the notion of publishing, and the other changed our mission 180-degrees from a fixation on print media placement to the integrated online approach you advocate.

Your book brings together the process and practice of new-media, Web 2.0 PR better than any approach I’ve come across. This week our entire staff gets the book, and tonight after reading the final pages, I’ll get some sleep!

[David Polinchock]

This is a really big question for the industry, just what's new and what's not. I wrote a little piece about it back in '03 or '04 at http://tinyurl.com/39244w But both your pieces struck some real issues that more people should be discussing! I'll be linking to them tomorrow up on our blog!

[David Meerman Scott]

Kelly, Glenn, John, and David:

Thank you all for your thoughtful comments. THis is a fascinating subject and you guys have obviously given it some thought. I need to do some more thinking and writing on this!

Cheers, David

[SongHee492]

This is a really interesting topic. I have been thinking that it must be hard for people working at marketing/PR industry since the world is changing so quickly. But, it is true that still we are trying to communicate with other people like the old days. The only difference is now we use the web more often.

[Jeff Paul Scam]

I have been so impressed with leading-edge, practical information as I have with “The New Rules of Marketing & PR.”