The Digital Invasion Continues
By Marc Majers
Recently a sequence of events signified that the “digital” age and a new era of thinking is here to stay.
The Internet, as we know it, just celebrated its 10th anniversary. Many of the websites that we visit on a daily basis, like Yahoo, are giving us a retrospective into their online history, even though it doesn’t seem that long ago. Many faces we knew growing up are now gone. For example, Brian Williams replaced Tom Brokaw, Ryan Seacrest replaced Casey Casem, and Elizabeth Vargas replaced Barbara Walters while Ted Koppel and Dan Rather retired. CDs are eminently becoming Ipods, FM is becoming XM, VCR is now TiVo, UPC is RFID (Radio Frequency Identification), newspapers are now competing with Blogs, and your cell phone is also your camera, TV, Mp3 player and PDA. So you may ask yourself what does this all mean? Actually, more importantly, what do all these changes, especially this digital invasion mean for me? Just because we have all this quick, easy, cutting-edge digital power at our fingertips doesn’t mean we should treat it any differently than we did with something new before. Whether you are a business owner, marketing professional or a house-wife, the message is the same. To adapt to this digital invasion we must carefully harness its power and then combine it with a blend of our own creativity, innovation and old-fashioned etiquette to form something completely different.
This adaptive process is called synthesis.
Synthesis
What is this so-called synthesis? In a nutshell, it is the combination of two ideas to create a better one. The combination of two ideas to form a better one has been the common theme through the ages. The post-it note was the fusion of paper and adhesive. Both paper and adhesive were around for years, but the innovative environment that 3M encouraged, sparked putting it together into one portable package. Another example of this innovation is illustrated in a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup ad campaign. Their slogan in the 1980s was “Is that your peanut butter in my chocolate or your chocolate in my peanut butter?” This signifies the idea that two great tastes can form one delicious product; this is exactly what the digital world has evolved into today.
In the digital age, everyone is taking the word “digital” and adding it to another object to make a new cool product; recently it seems digital equals big bucks. Digital plus music equals MP3s, digital plus videos equals NetFlix, digital plus garage sale equals Ebay, and digital plus art equals web design. The list could be endless; you could just add any word plus digital and you may be on to a goldmine because trends say online isn’t going away anytime soon. The word digital plus coconut may not make any sense today, but I don’t think instant synthetic foods are too far away from reality.
How do we jump-start synthesis in the digital age? First, examine the new technology and how to harness its power. Try not to dwell on its negative points but instead focus on its positive ones. There are many things that will never change throughout time and in these are the foundations of change. Innovation, creativity and the hope for a brighter tomorrow will not change. Today it seems that there aren’t any original ideas, just better ideas built upon existing ones. Even before cavemen discovered fire there was fire, but being able to create it at a moments notice was a major breakthrough.
Adapt
On a recent trip to New York City, I noticed that everyone walking in the busy streets was wearing an Ipod. The popularity of digital music isn’t stuck on our hard drives anymore, it’s mobile. There have been Mp3 players for years (5 years ago there was the Rio player) but it’s the slick design of the Ipod that drove its popularity through the roof. Apple discovered through synthesis that if they combined an Mp3 player with great design they could make a great product; the Ipod was born.
Now that everyone wants digital music, what is the music industry doing to adapt? In my opinion the music industry is adapting to digital very slowly. In an article in the March 26, 2005 issue of Billboard Magazine, seasoned alternative rocker Beck nailed the digital invasion on the head when he said, “Everyone’s talking about what the future of recorded music is in terms of downloading songs and the implications of people not buying CDs and what happens to the artwork. But if you’re breaking music down to where it’s encoded files, you can easily put visual information into that. The artwork isn’t something that’s printed on the CD case, it’s something that exists in the music.” The music industry needs to essentially adapt to the environment around them and discover new ways to the harness the medium at ground level. The forward motion of digital music can’t be stopped, but attempting to put artwork inside the file and selling downloadable music at local malls is a start. Many other mediums are beginning to see that you must adapt to survive.
If you don’t change to digital, then you might end up like a local video store that closed its doors after 20 years of service. Recently, BlockBuster has been scrambling to offer new perks at its stores so they don’t face the same demise. The aging video leader BlockBuster all of a sudden offered no late fees, online ordering, and home delivery to simply become more like Netflix. The emerging online giant NetFlix is causing every video shop to think twice about the way they do business and NetFlix’s customer service is leading the way. This online video store has embraced the digital age and understands what customers want. They realize that people want quick service, a large variety, and the convenience of ordering online. Right now their service operates through snail mail, but they are not far from offering the same downloads over the Internet.
Harness the Power
To make the digital invasion even more relevant, eBay is now building local stores. They are making the idea of selling stuff over the Internet even more appealing. All you have to do now is drop off your unwanted garage sale items to your eBay local store and they will take your pictures, create your descriptions and post your items for sale for a modest charge. They have truly harnessed the power of their stores in two ways with a strong online and offline store presence; this is a loose definition of brick and mortar. Making something simple is a big factor that brings digital into our lives.
This leads us into Blogs and their untapped power. Recently, during the presidential election a Blog broke news about George W. Bush. This is significant because the average Joe can now write about whatever they feel like and they don’t have to be a HTML wiz to publish their thoughts online. In this case, the web reacted faster than traditional press. The major difference between a web page and a Blog is the fact that a Blog can easily be updated. With this medium being so easy, it seems like a Blog is published everyday about a teacher a student doesn’t like or someone’s personal diary. Be careful to what you publish and use common sense.
Etiquette
Just because you can take a photo with your camera phone, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t ask someone’s permission before you take a picture. Even though it’s easy to swap music digitally, doesn’t mean you can expect everyone to freely share their music collection with you. Just because you can write a Blog, doesn’t mean should broadcast your personal statistics across the World Wide Web. I think that just because it’s digital and easily portable doesn’t entitle us to throw our common sense and being polite out the window. We know it’s easy to share mp3s or digital pictures, but they still are personal. Respect each other’s digital collections as though it were anything else.
Whether you are a business owner, marketing professional or a house-wife, the message is the same. To adapt to this digital invasion we must carefully harness its power and then combine it with a blend of our own creativity, innovation and old-fashioned etiquette to form something completely different. The digital invasion will continue at an accelerated speed and more changes are right around the corner. As a member of mainstream society, you will be affected by the power of all things digital. Embrace the change to digital because it is working its way into your life whether you like it or not.
MM~