That was Pogo's line, right? How did one line from a newspaper comic strip become such a part of the shared cultural body of knowledge in America? And it lives on almost thirty-five-years after Walt Kelly's strip's run ended. "We have met the enemy and he is us".
As a media professional watching an onslaught of interactive, empowering media catch up and pass traditional media, I'm not only struck by how ineffective the responses of the old guard is, I'm totally floored by the pie-in-the-sky attitudes many of my peers take regarding our collective future.
Arrogance, bias, unrealistic expectations for new technologies, poor product management, dismissive attitudes, and a steadfast determination, in a changing world, to bear down, redouble our efforts and ever more diligently stick to the path that our readers/viewers/listeners are abandoning in droves for greener pastures.
Arrogance - We ignore the new threats until they're overtaking us. We ignore or, worse yet, abuse our most important customers - not the advertisers that support us but the audiences that the advertisers are trying to reach. We use our bully pulpits to demonize foes, build up friends, and pursue our own agendas.
Bias - We surround ourselves with like-minded individuals, lose perspective on how the real world (our audiences) see things, and treat our ideology as reality. In this one we're guilty of both sins of commission and ommision - giving warped perspectives on the things we do present, and choosing to present only things that work to back up our idealogy.
Unrealistic Expectations for new Technology - Everyone wants a savior, but we're too willing to see them in technological breakthroughs that are usually stopgap responses to the threats that are over-taking us. We build stopgap technical "solutions" so that we can say "me, too"...AM Stereo, Digital TV, Newspaper Websites, HD Radio...and expect a public already abandoning us to come running back because of our pale imitations of what they've abandoned us for. Instead of focusing on content and creating a demand for our brands, we keep running out new technology that no one but us cares about.
Poor Product Management - When the going gets tough, you can count on us to make it even tougher. As new competition exploits our already homogenized brands, we protect the bottom line by cutting the quality and originality of the content even more. As former readers/viewers/listeners abandon us as boring and irrelevant, we further streamline, eliminating compelling product, effective marketing, and strive to hasten the decline.
Dismissive Attitudes - Ahhh, our first response to every new threat. Dismiss it as a fad. Look how big we are. Look how small they are. Who cares? And, indeed, many of the new threats are fads. Some aren't. But those shaky starts don't mean anything. Historically most new media goes through a shaky launch, too closely imitating the established media, going through its own "me, too" phase. Then, after the initial failure, the bright kids figure out how to treat the new medium like a new medium, and the race is on. Most of them succeed after they've been discarded as dead. Newspaper dismissed radio as a fad. Radio dismissed TV as a fad. AM Radio dismissed FM radio. Over-the-air TV dismissed Cable. Cable dimsissed Satellite TV. And as we dismiss them we also comfort ourselves with the thought that we've always been here, as if somehow a long past insures our future.
Sticking to the path that got us here - All traditional media is intrusive. All new media is inherently interactive. While new media is still figuring this out, often doing more intrusive stuff than they should (banner ads, spam, etc.) we have a window of opportunity to figure out how to make our old school media more interactive. But I don't see us doing that. I see us racheting up the intrusiveness, to counter for the fact that it's just not as effective as it used to be. Let's run more commercials, and yell louder in them, and match them up by sponsoring everything on the radio and TV, so nothing is done simply for the benefit of the viewer/listener anymore. My morning newspaper, more often than not, has a sticker with an advertising message above the fold on the front page. Sometimes when I peel it off the newsprint underneath comes off, too. 'Love that! We give advertisers access to our databases, selling out our audience and subjecting them to more spam. As our audience gains more and more choices everyday, we act like they have no choice at all but to put up with whatever we throw at them.
I don't think all traditional media has to fade away, but I think if we don't change the way we think, it's destined to happen in this generation! It's going to take innovative thinking, a commitment to our audiences, a bold new approach to both product management and marketing, and a lot of trial and error. We've got to get down in the trenches and fight for our place in the media spectrum, in the hearts of people. We've got to make our brands something worth getting excited about again. We've got to generate some passion. First, we have to admit that we're not on the right track.
It's interesting, that Pogo comic strip of yesteryear. It had a three-decade run in the nation's newspapers, home delivery to just about every family in the nation day-after-day. We all knew that guy. But I never knew Pogo worked in traditional media until now. Indeed, "We have met the enemy, and he is us!"
No comments:
Post a Comment