Good post, pltodms. Perhaps the article could have stated things somewhat differently, but we're all grappling with impacts and trends that aren't clear.
Upstream, aspects of the matter were addressed with a broad brush: "Besides instantaneous access to content, the net offers individuation and granularity. Marketers work back from the product to the consumer, which implies consumer acceptance in the first place."
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It's been noted that that things are changing; the thinking and reality was that a product could be created and sold to, as the article puts it, a "passive" audience. But it wasn't just a passive audience, it was a captive audience exposed to mainstream media. And to a great degree, it worked: examples are everywhere in our past, from the Edsel to the Monkees to tailfins on cars. That business model, as stated, burst into flower at the apogee of the American century.
Some believed you could sell anything with the right campaign. The quality or usefulness of the product was secondary; primary was the belief that no product could succeed without marketing. and the corollary of which was that markets could be created for products, even those essentially useless, merely by stimulating demand.
In the present, we've seen the decline of mass media - the traditional channels by which passive consumers were persuaded - and with that, the decline of once-mighty Madison Avenue - truly a huge industry.
Reaching consumers on the 'net must be done with a feather-light technique: these days everyone has a spam filter: literal and methaphorical.
One of the drivers behind attempts to control the 'net, and run it under corporate auspices was the desire, so far defeated, to make the Internet a rough equivalent to past models. Because incumbents saw and understood the forces at play, they joined the effort: they wanted a slice of the pie. But the future moved too fast for all of them - and equally important, those responsible for the creation of the Internet resisted all attempts to confine it.
This is a fascinating subject, especially since we're discussing atrophy and genesis in the same breath.
Regards,
Jim |
