the communication medium helps evolve the product
June 22nd, 2010 • posts i've written
Last week, Stephen Walker made the point to me that early print ads, with their large headlines, focused producers on the unique selling proposition of their products. And as advertising gained the advantage of moving pictures, the unique selling proposition became the emotional selling proposition and the modern concept of the brand.
I thought it over and re-watched this TED talk from David Byrne on how architecture has helped evolve musical form.
I think the point can be made that communication mediums help evolve the product (and not just the marketing). But if that is so, products should be evolving to be more social, or spreadable in digital communication mediums. Is that so? Well, there is Baker Tweets for one.
And products should be evolving to be more interactive with our handheld devices, those mini super computers we’re so fond of, is that so? Well, there was the Yelp augmented reality iPhone app for one.
All of which was an interesting afternoon thought for thirty seconds until I realized, dammit, that I was beaten to the punch by at least forty years.
As Faris would say, originality is a myth.
The lesson is that, in a new environment, products without these traits, spreadability and interactivity, are more likely to suffer the fate of the unlucky Dodo.
Related posts:
- advertising technology: peruse the product or wax poetic
- what is beautiful design?
- the age of synthesis
3 Responses (add your comment)
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It all seems to come down to resonance. It’s not about the sound or the room, or the message or the medium, it’s about how everything bounces around and ultimately gets absorbed by the person on the receiving end.
I really like how you took this video and brought it into this context, giving it a new, broader meaning by introducing it through a discussion on digital communication. I think it shows your understanding of creating resonance for your audience, though if you wanted to go full blast maybe you should have remixed it with a kitten’s head superimposed on David Byrne’s.
On the importance of spreadability and interactivity, I agree that they’re indispensable qualities in any communication, but I would argue that they pertain to the result of the communication rather than the communication itself. You want it to spread and you want people to interact with it (probably intertwined actions), but that’s like saying the falling trees that sound best are the ones that people can hear.
My point is that resonance, as it pertains to communication, doesn’t boil down to the message or the medium that fundamentally alters it, it doesn’t boil down to the audience and what they want to hear, it doesn’t boil down to the time or the place or the current events — it’s all context, it’s all connected, and something in our DNA tells us we prefer harmony to discord.
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Bud, likewise enjoyed the post and appreciate your running with Stephen Walker’s comments. The question your posing, in part, is one of how a new platform transforms the way we communicate. Obviously, the issue is an important one. Just as Richard Nixon seemed out of place in a television environment, John McCain did in a “social media” landscape. The important aspect we often forget, though, is that:
a.) it takes a cultural change to begin to accept these new platforms as the mainstream–especially within the culture of marketing and communication–before the full potential of a technology platform really becomes apparent; and
b.) that transformation doesn’t just change how we communicate on the new platform but how we communicate in more traditional ways as well. For instance, part of McCain’s issue was that he seemed much too formal in television debate for a more open communication environment today, whereas his rhetoric may have not stood out as odd in a debate in a prior presidential election.
I attended Fiske Matters, a tribute to media scholar John Fiske, a few weeks ago. Fiske came back to the academic world to give a talk, focused on what he is learning as a media scholar now in the antiques world and how that might apply to the moment we face today. Long story short, he points out that many of our technological developments today in terms of media and communication are aimed at projecting ourselves outward, at being more informal, and at blurring certain lines of piracy that have been constructed over the last several centuries (the type of communication we see on Facebook) while struggling to hold on to others (see battles regarding Internet privacy, protecting one’s identity, and so on).
I think both these points are crucial for us to keep in mind as we think about how we might transform marketing and corporate communication (and indeed how the two disciplines really work together in a media environment where their individual roles are now less apparent).
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Wow. Great vid and pitch perfect point about creating art to fit the medium. In our case, the art being selling.