Marketing Profs

The 21st century economy, it seems, has a strange sense of irony. The former dot-com miscreants are now the darlings of Wall Street, while the corporate establishment has weathered everything from accounting scandals to bankruptcy.

The Changing of the Guard?

The Economist recently reported that Google "is now equal to the combined worth of Walt Disney, News Corp., and Viacom," while "shares of 'old' media firms such as News Corp., Comcast and other giants of television, film, radio and print, have fallen 25% behind the S&P 500 in the past two years."

And it's not just media. Delta, Northwest, United, and US Air all struggled through bankruptcy filings in 2005, while low-cost player Southwest Airlines posted a fourth quarter profit of 54%. Ford and GM continue to struggle through high fuel costs, business and product issues, while Toyota and Hyundai continue to gain market share. In the US, Federated closed Filene's while the flagship brand of Spanish fashion group Inditex is planning to bring Zara to the American retail market and Japanese fashion brand Uniqlo's has said its push into the US is part of its plan to achieve annual sales of about $9 billion by 2010.

In the advertising and marketing world, newer, lesser-established, smaller agencies like Strawberry Frog, Mother, Mcgerry Bowen, Taxi, and Modernista continue to win more business and grow, while most large, established agency holding companies (the exception is Omnicom) struggle to maintain profit margins and accounts.

What could possibly be the cause of so many beleaguered established players and fortunate newer ones?

From a Culture of Unity to One of Plurality

Audiences are smaller, more fractionalized, more difficult to define and easily distracted with many choices. As marketing and media professionals, we are versed with the shift of consumer culture from a passive audience of unity to an interactive audience of plurality. Technology, new mediums, the Internet and choice proliferation has splintered the unifying principle of Americanism into many, fragmented subcultures organized by interests, ideology, preferences and tastes. A twist on the Latin phrase "E Pluribus Unum" to "E Una Pluribu," (from "from many come one" to "from one come many") would adequately describe today's society. We have become a Culture of Plurality.

In a culture of plurality, groups transcend demographics and gather around meaning. This means a 20 year old in St. Louis has more in common with a 50-year-old college professor in the UK than his next-door neighbor. In fact, if the 20-year-old has an iPod, he would have a great deal in common with Professor Michael Bull, a lecturer in media and culture at the University of Sussex. Bull is often referred to as Professor iPod because of his research into the cultural phenomenon of the device and has noted that all types—doctors, lawyers, students, mothers, musicians, celebrities of all walks and all ages—have gathered around the lifestyle dubbed the iPod generation.

Yet, we have not embraced the full significance of millions of consumers armed with affordable technology to plug them into any conceivable piece of information attainable on the Internet. This quantum leap in technology and information control is having a profound effect on society at large. Just as the railroad system at the turn of the 20th century cut transcontinental travel time from six months to six weeks, the jet plane from six weeks to six hours, and the fax machine from six hours to six minutes, the Internet has cut it from six minutes to six seconds. Technology, whether we disdain it or love it, is accelerating the pace at which we live. Consider:

• We now absorb the same amount of information in one year that took 100 years to absorb in the 17th century.
  
  
• In the next five years, we will double the amount of information generated by all humans throughout history.