Leo Burnett - Cultural Fuel

Found an article by Keith Blanchard of the Huffington post in my FB stream posted by Alan Wolk. In it, fueled by the crisis and news of more city newspapers eating dust, Keith states the hard truths about content (it’s free!), competition (is infinite!) and advertising (is dead!).

These truths, to be fair, shouldn’t really be news to anyone. We have all heard this before. First, about 15 years ago when it was still a futuristic scenario, and then again and again, as the landscape changed - almost to fit our predictions.

After painting this repeated bleak picture, Keith turns it around and says that even though it may seem to be a bad time to be a NY Times shareholder, it is a the golden age if you are a content producer. It’s a rallying cry for those who write and have tried to make a living with it. How they will be able to do that, Keith can’t say, but, hey: why not rally?

Is the media irreversibly democratized, for better or for worse? I think it is…and what comes next is anybody’s guess. Including yours. The architects of online have untethered us from our old media moorings, and have given us the ability to tap into the power of the infinite. Infinite information, infinite competition, infinite human connection. They’ve put us at the cusp of a new world…the rest is up to us.

Everyone knows and says that “everything is different,” but that is a fact that is almost in the past already. If the models of content distribution, news, etc are gone, what is the new model? Will there even be a new model, or will won’t we require one because we will rely on serving up content as individuals to other individuals? Is it that we will do content production sort of “on the side” without quitting the day job? Or will news production become a utility, subsized and regulated by governments?

“Workers of the world - unite!” was a rally too, but it had an aim and a new model in mind: a new society without classes.

Rallies can be nice, but you gotta know what you are rallying for. “Content producers of the world, unite!” Unite to do what exactly? Too bad we can’t ask Gene Roddenberry.

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