Everything has changed – EVERYTHING!
Nothing is the same – NOTHING!
The Old is dead – DEAD!
In a week – in a day – I hear this and often.
Sometimes from young people – like from a recent intern wearing and carrying a virtual mall-full of logoed fashions and clutching her iPhone – who told a group that her generation could not be swayed by any communications of any kind and disdained anything that, even remotely, suggested marketing. To be fair, her fellow presenters rolled their eyes….
To older folk, who in a rush to be cool, hip and in, swear that they do nothing but Tweet…and that unless we get with the program, exclusively, across all of our clients, we will be lost in the rust of the unused. Were I cynical I might call them twits…
Reminds me of when Yahoo! said that all you needed on the Web was to be a part of their universe – there was nothing else.
Or when MySpace was taking over the world; or when Boo.com (look them up) was going to close down offline retail forever or when FedEx would explode in size and profit because anyone who bought on the Web wanted it all yesterday…
So…Logos still sell to all ages. Funny that Twitter seems to appeal to an older demographic…Yahoo! is not the power it was, but cannot be counted out…MySpace is still around, albeit with the loss of more than a third of its traffic…Boo.com went bust, a creation of Wall Street…and FedEx created two-day ground delivery because no one wanted to pay the price for overnight and in the end we just want it in time…
So there you have it.
I was reminded of this last night when I went to see The Social Network – worth seeing by the way – in a “horrors,” old-fashioned megaplex – full of people…even though it has been open for a while – in fact, in the IMAX theatre, where everyone munched popcorn, turned off their phones – smart or otherwise – and enjoyed a most analogue experience of a great digital story, projected by the way in digital technology on a huge screen.
And there you have it.
So what’s the point?
I return to my story of last week– when I wrote about the Nokia Ideas Camp and the crazy mix of developers, programmers, singers, artists, writers, Hollywood, Silicon Valley, New York, Helsinki and everything and everyplace in between.
And then I call your attention to the following…listen;
“All generalizations are dangerous, even this one.” ~Alexandre Dumas
And there you really have it!
When I got home last night I, by chance, ran across an article by Daniel Lyons of Fake Steve Jobs fame.
It tells the story of Digg, a company that was supposed to have altered the news landscape and whose value was going to be in the mega millions. Today – it’s basically worthless, unprofitable and left behind in the changing landscape of disruption.
So in an age when generalizations are the norm and when every new anything is the latest, greatest, biggest and, of course, category killer, I found Mark Zuckerberg’s quote (not in the movie – but in a conference) to be refreshing and honest and in line with Dumas – “The biggest competitor for us is someone we haven’t heard of.”
And then I went to my Facebook page….
What do you think?
PS – Sorry about the glitch last week – the posting engine is now working again and hopefully that is not a generalization – so feel free to go back if you’d like…
NBC News’ Brian Williams has made some seriously funny public comments on the same subject, absolutely worth three or four minutes of your time to watch. Access the video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3n8kHThR8Y.
Dear David,
I hope you are well,
As it seems that you have a passion for French literature and their famous quotes -Then, I would like to suggest you to read the amazing French philosopher Michel Serres: The Natural Contract (http://www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=515).
He explained that nothing have changed in terms of innovation … except the fact that new technologies today are more and more close from one and others and tacitly their disruption effects. Ex: A doctor today needs constantly to learn new technologies, new practices, new sciences … he is living in the “open-technology” world (Kotler) … rather than doctors years ago have more time (sometimes a lifetime) to assimilate science disruptions … d’ou son livre le Contrat Naturel.
Bonne lecture, and thanks again for your Excellent blog
Gregory
The Serres note is critical and and I think applies in an interesting way — I have written before about Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, a 2005 book by Malcolm Gladwell. In it he posits that its more importnat — now I would argue more thna ever — to go with your gut __ so in a world where disruption has us not just trying to catch up — but even questioning our every move — Blink is worth a considertaion — http://www.gladwell.com/blink/index.html
I think history repeats itself just in different forms. Didn’t the rebellious kids of the 60′s disdain anything “corporate” or that resembled marketing/consumerism, yet many became “name brands” themselves, say, Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream, etc.? In fact, Bill Gates said in Bob Cringley’s documentary “Triumph of the Nerds” Part 2, “If you just slow down a little bit who knows who it’ll be, probably some company that may not even exist yet, but eh someone else can come in and take the lead.” Sounds pretty similar to Mark Zuckerberg’s quote, doesn’t it?!
See also David’s comments in this recent article in Tech News Daily:
Digital Advertising Growth Outpaced by the Hype-
http://www.technewsdaily.com/digital-advertising-growth-outpaced-by-the-hype-1555/
There is also a good article in today’s AdAge on agency investment and experimentation:
Quitting, Leaving, Retiring: Why Aren’t Ad Agencies Rewiring?
http://adage.com/agencynews/article?article_id=146876
The trick is to balance the technical and universal, isn’t it? For knowledge that will still be worthwhile after a lifetime you can study classic liberal arts I.E. human history, biographies, lasting literature, and science for traits that are universal. Then you can use the technical skills and knowledge of the time (SEO, Conversion rate, The Long Tail, etc. now, the telegraph and assembly line during Carnegie’s time) to gain a tactical advantage.
and Jerry Brown won in California — go figure….
It’s my first look at this blog, after having sat for breakfast with Sable at Nokia IdeasCamp. After that breakfast I realized I’d like to listen more, and learn more. Thanks for blogging, I’m smiling at your post already!