The Broadcast Ad model is in intensive care

It is not etched in stone that content will (and should) remain free. I tend to agree with my former employer Rupert Murdoch that the ad model is evolving into something that barely resembles its former self.

As society becomes more technologically complex, there exists the temptation for economics to somehow match its pace, stride for stride. For a short while, people will happily come along for the ride. But, eventually, a point of saturation is reached. Yes, the brain can handle thousands of thoughts in a second, but it is not a qualitative process whereby educated and informed decisions can easily be made. Once we become too saturated with data, we need to pause, analyze the buffer, then communicate with others about our analysis. Only then can we make appropriate choices.

The ad model is suffering from implosion because there simply is too much advertising to consume. People are tuning it out. This should not only be expected, but welcome. As humankind pushes back at the breakneck pace of technology, new and innovative models for creating and distributing content will begin to emerge. Many of them will likely employ various methods for generating revenue such as advertising through product/brand insertion, and tiered pricing for different levels of access.  

The answer is not limited to mutually exclusive notions because we are in the middle of a major shift in the roles that technology & media play in society. It may take a decade or two for this shift to be complete, and in the meantime, businesses must consider employing strategies that embrace complimentary mutiple approaches in order to reach and connect with a temporarily exhausted end-user.

Announcing the Death of SEO (and not a moment too soon!)

A good deal of Web 2.0 arguably presents a far more slippery slope than any other tech trend of the century. Naturally, the herd is always the last to know about something, and SEO is no different. I have come to learn that if every third or fourth person at a cocktail party is dropping the buzz-phrase SEO in one way or other, it clearly has become a deprecated subject.

These days, people seem to always be looking for short-cuts to successful results. I believe SEO is now just another lazy man's short cut to the hard work of creating sticky, robust, vital content and then taking the time to create serious, thoughtful, and compelling linkback relationships. Most of the killer algorithms now require the above-mentioned hard work, and SEO is no longer a solution by itself. Granted, in your niche marketplace, SEO may put you on top for a short while, but if you live only by SEO, you will surely die by SEO. Eventually, your competition will beat you because they are willing to hardwire their site for success by doing the hard work.

Blogs as short-cut marketing tools have been dead for years. SocNet may well go down the same road, dying under its own useless weight or getting constrained by policy or the simple common sense business notion that spending so much time on the computer leads to productivity losses, not gains.

Over the past 15 years or so, new tech has often reminded me of the new toy given to the narcissistic child. They play with it so hard and fast that it ends up broken in pieces, only to leave the child craving the next new toy. Will ALL these new technologies go the same way? I hope not. Hard work, and the use of new technology in MODERATION, will always get you where you need to be, without all the wasted time, bandwidth, and unnecessary drama.

Managing millenials in the workplace: Our Purpose or Their purpose?

As the so-called millenials enter the work force, or form a start-up business, or simply begin the journey of defining career objectives, there exists the challenge of educating them to the harsh cold realities of the work-a-day business world. So, how can we lead millenials to a place where they can mature into effective and useful participants in the company culture?

The problem here is somewhat complicated in that millenials grew up believing they could achieve anything, for the most part, without a clear set of rules, or framework, or container to help them form a good foundation that can support and sustain their achievements. Thus, when they encounter something that stands in the way of the path to achievement, they tend to consider it antagonistic to their objective.

It doesn't at all help that many present-day brands marketing almost exclusively to this group (i.e. video games, listening & mobile devices) actually leverage these self-centric tendencies to foist product on the group as a whole thereby reinforcing the negative programming.

Eventually, it all comes crashing to a halt in the workplace, where millenials suddenly realize that their sense of entitlement to a sort of achievement fast-track is a complete delusion. But companies, seeing this as a communications problem, are considering ways to meet the group half-way through specialized messaging and intra-networking platforms to make it easier for the group to receive training and execute strategy. This is not automatically a productive solution.

Companies need to count the hard costs of hand-holding this group until it can somehow get its bearings in the real world. And the solution should be finite in its execution. Otherwise, the company will be permanently married to another cluster of apps that only results in enabling the very self-centric perceptions the group needs to shed in the process of maturing in the workplace.

Until companies solve this growing dilemma, there will continue to be bumps in the road that can only be mitigated by incubating millenials in a way that gradually empowers them to achieve their goals in a team context while also training them to be effective participants instead of usurpers.

Information, Knowledge and Wisdom.

Twenty-five years ago or so, there used to be just one information explosion. The 90s brought the digital age to the masses and also the advent of a multiplicity of information explosions. At the turn of the millenium, this plurality quickly gave way to a complete cacophony of nearly infinite explosions.

Naturally, as society becomes subjected to all this information in one way or another, the question is raised, "are we gaining knowledge and wisdom, too, along the way?"

The whole technology layer presents a slippery slope for many who seek to gather a quantity of information quickly. It's true that info can be mined rapidly, but there are often many bones to spit out in the process. Does any of this actually lead to increased knowledge? I think it can, but a prerequisite amount of common sense is essential for vetting data found on the web.

The real danger here is the growing trend of mistaking information for knowledge and/or wisdom. For example, a handful of programmers in the late 1990s began developing the app that sends text messages over a wireless network. They used their growing storehouse of mobile platform development information to construct the basic texting application many of us now use today. Did they stop to think that teenagers would become addicted to the technology to the point where they are sitting side by side on a bus and texting each other instead of talking? I have it on good authority that they did not.

Thus, we seem to have sacrificed the notion that technology is best developed and applied when it is counterbalanced with an equal dose of wisdom.

One of my favorite phrases these days is "Just because you can, doesn't mean you should." How many investment banking and mortgage banking firms (not to mention other companies who got into banking after the rollback of Glass-Steagall) looking to make their quarterly numbers failed to consider wisdom before they leveraged their balance sheets up to 40:1 nearly bringing the U.S. economy to the brink of collapse?

Wisdom does not proceed from knowledge; it guides and governs it. May we NEVER lose sight of this fact. For information without wisdom does not lead to knowledge; and without wisdom, knowledge is directionless.

Balancing the heavenly and the earthly.

With all of us seemingly drowning in a sea of technology these days, many are considering the question of whether or not it is better to concentrate more on eternity and less on today, in an attempt to achieve the right balance.

The answer is found clearly in the Bible as Christ commands us to "...love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment. And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." (Mark 12:30-31).

When we do as Christ commands, we learn how to achieve and sustain "the balance" as the dynamics of life unfold around us. Both factors are equally essential, much the same way salvation leads us to the subsequent journey of sanctification.