In 1962 Marshall McLuhan, the great media commentator, said:
"The next medium, whatever it is - it may be the extension of consciousness - will include television as its content, not as its environment, and will transform television into an art form"
Here we are, 50 years later, watching more TV than ever, spending even more time online and playing computer games. There are otiose arguments about whether TV advertising is dead or dying from self-interested parties, eager to land grab or retain above the line media spend. And, in acts of wonderful post-modernity, Thinkbox, the persuasive cheerleaders for commercial television, now produce (excellent) TV ads designed to persuade advertisers that TV ads are persuasive.
The squabbles about where advertising dollars ought to be spent go nowhere; it's hard to care much about them. It's interesting they happen so often right now, illustrating the truism that the most profound disagreements always take place when a system's in crisis; accurately describing how we live now, and the bankruptcy of old-fashioned destination-centric notions of marketing.
We've arrived at an end game for the organised spectacle in which broadcasting, on or offline, can decreasingly satisfy solipsistic and self-organised audiences or groups with a culturally unifying end point or transformative experiences. And yet the debate about media spend, while paying lip service to change (the red button works, too!), is fixed in a tired world-view. The question is, in this time of crisis, where are we headed?
Media obsolescence
McLuhan, in his posthumously published Laws of Media, describes the effects on society of any (usually new) medium, and frames four questions that should be asked of it:
- What does the medium enhance?
- What does the medium make obsolete?
- What does the medium retrieve that had been obsolesced earlier?
- What does the medium flip into when pushed to extremes?
These laws help us explore the grammar and syntax of media. Applying them can help us extrapolate into the future and imagine how the Post-Advertising Age might be.
Many thought that the first web age, an era of experiential destinations 1995-2001, would supplant television. Its key characteristics following McLuhan's tetrad of enhanced interactivity and brochure-ware, were both retrieved and enhanced from print publishing.
The next phase, the so-called Web 2.0, recognised the dynamic commercial potential of the web and superimposed a catalogue model on the existing platforms. These branded experiences, rooted in e-commerce, didn't yet threaten TV with obsolescence, and flipped into hard-sell marketing in its most vulgar form.
The end of days for their channel-centred marketing.
We're now in what's may be the last incarnation of the traditional publishing model in which brand destinations (like TV or the majority of experientially transactional web sites) define advertising. It's a time in which audiences are loyal to talent or content but aren't channel loyal. The key features are websites which enable personalised and socialised activities which aggressively promote themselves as an alternative to TV advertising. This undermines the value of commercial broadcasting for brands, desperate for new solutions and ROI, which they've temporarily found in Google's keyword promise. In the post-advertising age advertisers and brands will have to become the talent.
No wonder the TV guys and old-world web-shops are arguing so much. It's the end of days for channel-centric marketing.
Audiences in the new online sales theatres, ironically driven by social media, increasingly reject the emotional homogenisation of experiences through moving images and favour media they can invent, make their own and share on their own terms. With ownership of extraordinarily powerful and easy-to-use mobile devices, they no longer wish to be passive voyeurs and demand to be the subjects of their own dramas, with their world in their pockets. It's the mass amateurisation of all media production.
Rewinding to McLuhan's laws, in the next five years we're likely to see the extinction of destination websites and an unstoppable decline in the value of 30-second spots on their grumpy older sibling, commercial television. The line will fade to gray.
Asocial Media
The fourth web-age will see an intense enhancement of personalisation which will flip into hyper-individualism so that social media will become asocial media-where the place we want to go is wherever we already are. We'll all follow the talent, looking for content that's embeddable and scrapable; hunting down rewarding material we can make our own and republish, sashaying through a world of our own invention, constantly aggregating and reformatting one-to-one streams.
The society of the spectacle will die and the spectacle of the society will be born.
Jon King is managing director at Story Worldwide.