The Nuclear Media Explosion - Media 2.0 Has 4 Pillars

"Selling to people who want to hear from you 

is more effective than interrupting strangers who don't." 

(Seth Godin)

We are living in a time of great change. In fact, right now is probably the greatest time of change the marketing and media world has ever seen. The explosion of media that has occurred over the last decade has been nothing short of nuclear. How we consume media has changed, forever. Profound changes have taken place, heralding the death of mass marketing. Marketers, take note. A new media model is here. It's called Media 2.0. Here are it's four pillars.

1. Fragmentation

It was far easier for marketers a couple of decades ago to get their messages out there. They simply had to interrupt people on one of the two TV channels available in Ireland at the time and BANG, their message had reached the masses. Now in Ireland, consumers have more than 800 TV channels to choose from, and access to countless more online. Marketing is no longer about interrupting people. As the dust settles on the nuclear media explosion, society is being broken down into much smaller parts and, with it, media. Globally, consumers organise themselves into specific interest groups and, as they do, they find (or form) new media to accommodate them. Whether you are into gardening, golf, or god, football, finance, or flying, there is a medium available to you, where you can receive and give back content. This Media 2.0 era provides both a challenge and an opportunity for marketers. The challenge is finding your audience. It is not as simple as shouting at the world in the hope that those whom the message is intended for hear it and respond. Now you are required to find the media your audience is consuming and talk with them (not at them), in a way they appreciate. The opportunity this fragmentation offers is a much greater degree of message to audience relevance. If you get the message right, the media will allow you to talk to people who actually want to hear from you. That is, as long as you choose the right media of course.

2. Immediacy

Do you remember the time when, at around midnight or so, you would see this image on your TV screen? The TV channel had shut down for the night. You'll just have to wait until tomorrow to get the news. Compare that to the world we now live in. If a video takes more than 7 or 8 seconds to download we give up on it and press the "X" button. When we run a Google search we expect to receive 130,000,000 results in 0.40 seconds. Many of us don't wait until the weekly scheduled broadcast of our favourate TV programme, we watch the entire series in one go, if and when we want to.We just don't have the time to wait around. We expect things now. And I mean NOW! Patience is gone. Immediacy is here.  And this drive for immediacy has fueled the rapid global diffusion of information. Mark Little, founder and CEO of the social media news agency Storyful, tells an interesting story of the time when he knew a dramatic shift in the media landscape had taken place. It was 25th July 2009, he was attending a wedding, disconnected from traditional media, when someone informed him of the death of Michael Jackson. They had heard it, within just moments of the event occurring on the other side of the world, via social media. He said, "I decided at that stage that if this bunch of twentysomething-year-olds could know about a world event before everybody else, then I as a journalist am kind of obsolescent." In the new Media 2.0 era, people expect channels to be immediate and always on. And they have decreasing levels of tolerance for those that don't.

3. Convergence
Media convergence has taken place on a global level. Consumers don't give their undivided attention to just one medium at a time, they are increasingly multitasking with their media consumption. Marketers using multiple media, in an integrated fashion, is no longer merely optional. Media is converging and a multi-layered media approach is necessary. There is also a convergence between producers and consumers of media content. Traditional and digital channels are simultaneously consumed as global citizens both consume and produce content at a rate the world has never seen. People have become, not just passive consumers, but active prosumers, as they assume a hybrid role between consumption and production of content. Marketing is now in the form of dialogue, not monologue. Communications need to be considered as being, not one-way messages as in the past, but two-way conversations. Social citizens are gravitating towards new media that allows them the opportunity to have their voice heard. This means marketers need to be happy with a certain loss of control. A paradigm shift has taken place. Consumers now hold the power. 

4. Democratisation

You no longer own the message, the collective consumer decides what's hot and what's not. Audience numbers, whether they were viewing, listening or reading, have always been important. But never on the scale we have today. Think about the online news website, Reddit.com. Journalists don't decide what makes the front page, consumers do. As you read, you vote if you find it interesting and ignore if you don't. Whatever gets the most votes is bumped up to the top of the feed. An interesting concept and one that traditional media is struggling to keep up with. Once the editor of a newspaper makes her decisions, and the front page is printed, it can't be undone, like it or not. We vote on pretty much everything these days and influence the behaviour of others. Whether it be a restaurant, a hotel, a YouTube video or a secondary school teacher, democratisation is here and media needs to allow for it.

Understanding how your audience consumes media has become so important. Putting messages in the right places is now paramount to marketing success. Marketers work hard to get the creative right. Getting the media mix right, however, is just as important. There is no point having a beautifully designed arrow, carrying an utterly compelling message, if it doesn't reach its target. And, if it doesn't reach its target, not only will you waste money, you will also interrupt a lot of strangers who don't want to hear from you.

So, what do you think? Do you agree with my thoughts on the nuclear media explosion and the birth of Media 2.0? Are there other 'pillars' upon which Media 2.0 is built that I should have also discussed? Let me know...

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