Listenomics!

The October 10 issue of Advertising Age addresses a topic near and dear to the proverbial heart of 21st Century communicators--the Open Source Revolution. Sam Ebersole, our new media specialist and guest speaker at the Southern Colorado Press Club on October 12, used Bob Garfield's great front page piece as a starter for his timely and salient observations on the changes in new media and the communications revolution. Thank you, Sam!

Bob Garfield titled his piece "Listenomics" (www.adage.com) as he describes the critical changes in the Open Source Revolution--the Chaos Scenario--as marketers and advertisers strive to pull out of mainstream "old media" and move (incredibly slowly and painfully) toward the new reality for consumerism. Allowing that the "herd will be heard," Garfield examines the critical changes necessary for the advertising business to pull ahead, recognize (and corral) the collective wisdom of the masses and make the marketplace an interactive auction of exchanges that it once was.

Most marketers (and their scholarly counterparts) have long argued that marketing and the marketing communications that surround it are really a series of exchanges between buyer and seller, consumer and marketer. These exchanges begin and end with the customer, of course, but these exchanges keep the spiral of consumerism moving. If Garfield is right--and I encourage you to read his entire piece--he is really reverting to the very traditions of the marketplace where exchanges between consumers and sellers are truly one-to-one. This was the dream of one-to-one marketers a decade ago: Let's construct product (and product ideas) directly for each consumer and sell that consumer on a customized product that s/he will learn about, think about, feel good about, and eventually use, purchase or consume in some way. What a concept! That was Ben Franklin's premise in the 1770s and beyond.

Everything old is new again.....