The REAL Digital Revolution - as it applies to advertising that is

Ran across The Real Digital Revolution this morning and it's worth a read.  Not long, just a simple take on the effect of consumer empowerment in relation to your brand, product of service.  My friend Larry Everling called a version of it Connective Tissue back in 2005.

It's happening to every industry, travel, pharma, musics, real estate, vacuums, toilet paper, whatever.  And it's not just the kids anymore.

On this very blog, I've called it owning the experience longer.  The executional agency of past has been paid handsomely for providing materials to feed into broadcast media machine.  Materials placed, job done, bills paid.  Results anecdotal.  Audience satisfaction measures unmeasured.

Enter digital.  Limitless potential yes, but how does it fit into our established practices and processes of media?  Let's try to use it like that.  Guess it doesn't really work.  We'll go back to way it was.  Paid well and everybody at the company and agency was happy.  Audience restless again.

I usually use the Williamsburg, VA example.

January - Family wants to book summer vacation

January - Sees very patriotic advertising campaign, TV, online, print (ad agency and pr firm similar messages; they did their job right, awareness/interest . . . )

February - Visits www.visitwilliamsburg.com; a fine site, decent home page, lot's of stuff, starts getting loose one page down, content stale, no compelling offer or validation, 404 errors at the bottom of some of the offers (digital agency did its job; site live and functioning)

February - Decide to look first for a hotel that might work first.  Visit www.tripadvisor.com (substitute the 22 other review sites out there) and start reading reviews of the hotels, the city and trips people have taken.  Biggest question, "what is there to do?".  Many bad reviews;  questioning the idea, sounds boring (hello ad agency, pr firm and digital shop -get your voice out there; people are looking elsewhere to VALIDATE what you advertise and say)

March - Book trip to Kiawah (why there, another post . . . )

Rinse - Repeat.  Apply the same to every industry or product.