No, Seriously.
We'll meet at the mall to discuss your digital strategy.
Let me tell you about Rebeca Romero.
Rebecca is a world-class rower, earning an Olympic silver in 2004 and a World Championship in 2005. After a back injury, she switched to cycling - winning Olympic gold and the World Championship in that sport in 2008. I don’t need to tell you that rowing and cycling aren’t the same thing. They don’t use the same equipment or follow the same rules or even have the same cool outfits.
To say that the rules of web content are changing is a dramatic, and dangerous, understatement. The rules aren’t changing, the game is changing. I’m suggesting that you have to get out of the river, go inside, change clothes, and get on a bicycle.
(I’m going to drop this analogy now, out of respect for Rebecca Romero.)
In 1999 Netflix famously approached Blockbuster Video, the dominant player in movie rentals, seeking a partnership. Blockbuster declined, seeing no future in online rentals. Blockbuster filed for bankruptcy in 2010.
We should be smart enough now to see the signs, the same ones we missed before.
You know the other examples. Border’s, Tower Records, Kodak, Toys R Us. Circuit City. More than two thousand newspapers. Encyclopedia Britannica. Sears.
These were not (for the most part) mismanaged companies, beleaguered brands, or victims of some galactic force majeure. They simply didn’t have the precedent. They didn’t have the luxury of any recent history to show them how dramatic a little technology disruption can be. After all, it had been more than 200 years since the industrial revolution, and 500 since the printing press. The squawking modem on some teenager’s desk looked nothing like a meteor headed straight for Triceratops World.
We have no such excuse. We’re still riding out the aftershocks of that most recent tectonic shift, the one that targeted bricks and mortar and post offices and polling places, and we should be smart enough now to see the signs, the same ones we saw before:
Changing consumer behavior
Technological trends
Market disruption by new, agile companies
Declining “traditional” metrics
Shifting advertising landscape
Industry analyst predictions
Early adopter behavior
Regulatory changes
Investment patterns
If you’ve been following along, most of those should sound familiar. New technologies provided by young and rapidly-growing companies disrupting established markets? The value and effectiveness of audience/consumer acquisition/retention declining, while content redistribution evolves so rapidly that regulations and strategists struggle to keep up? Investors chasing buzz words rather than fundamentals? Annoying industry observers turning a string of questions into a paragraph?
Right now, if you want to stay competitive, digital strategy is corporate strategy. Let’s see if I can help with that.