This quarter Strategy + Business spotlights the restructuring of media and marketing industries in their Field Guide for the New Marketer cover package (registration required). Booze Allen Hamilton consultants focus on “engagement media” as the core disruptive change to upend the marketing world as we know it. The guide also carries a primer on the anatomy of the 21^st century marketing professional that’s a worthy read. If you don’t sense the extreme changes occuring in our business consider this anonymous quote from an US auto company CMO: “Two years ago 10 percent of my advertising budget had an online component. Today it’s 30 percent. Two years from now it will be 50.”

Technorati Tags: social media, marketing, media, public relations, advertising

The Sunday New York Times’ prolific feature on Bob Greenberg is just that not only for its length – it a huge piece — but for the commentary that reinforces the content of this blog and others following the movement. As head of IPG shop R/GA, Greenberg is viewed as the lead visionary trumpeting a new, technology-driven era for the branding business. Whether you’re sitting in a corporation, ad agency, PR firm or integrated shop, you should listen closely to what he and his clients have to say. Some quotes and attributions you can find in the piece.

“All of the corporations, agencies and marketing professionals who jointly hone and fire off a fusillade of messages across the commercial landscape each day need to overhaul both their organizational structures and how they relate to consumers — particularly the 20-something buyers called “millennials.”

“The Web is not a one-trick pony. The Internet is a new language because it’s not linear. The novel is linear, film is linear, but the Web is not.”

“I think technology is going to wreak havoc on the agency business. Because of advances in technology and communication, we’re surrounded by information we see and hear. Overload is a huge issue.”

“It’s not just that the interactivity and creativity is about commercials, TV and advertising. The development that comes out of it all is about how people interact and communicate. It’s about how they learn.”

“I think things are going to get infinitely more complex. The challenge is about taking things that are infinitely complex and making them simpler and more understandable.”

“Major money is going to be in motion in the next decade and yet no one really understands exactly where it will land, or even if it will land, or just disappear altogether.” (From Verizon Wireless CMO John Stratton, an R/GA client)

“It’s all about one thing: creative problem-solving sponsored by corporations to get the story out.”

Not much else to say…

(But if the Times piece isn’t enough you can read more in a December Business Week feature located here).

Technorati Tags: new media, social marketing, PR 2.0, R/GA

A number of stories and posts from the long weekend took a close look the media transformation in progress along with calls to action in the ad and PR community to get with the program or risk being left behind. A few places to check out include:

Jeff Jarvis comments on Bubble Generation’s overview of Media 2.0. If you can get past all the buzzwords in Bubble Generation’s post, you may better appreciate the implications of micro-media (blogs, podcasts) content services (mySpace, Flickr) and aggregation services (RSS) on information consumption (media, entertainment, advertising).

Business Week’s December 5^th profile of R/GA’s Bob Greenberg and his call for agencies to re-invent themselves from top to bottom. As he sees it, as bad as the current unraveling is for TV and newspapers, it’s potentially worse for ad agencies. He claims ad agencies have to be better conversant with information architecture, play in the world of personalized media, and create totally immersive brand experiences.

Steve Rubel’s post on his upcoming PR Week article calling for the PR industry to act in addressing new media trends. He says, and I very much agree, that we need to get in the game by mobilizing and training our people to work hands-on in this new world. No so much through more surveys or seminars, but showing our teams how to set up and read feeds, write posts and monitor blogs to better understand how to best counsel clients on traditional and non-traditional strategies.

Technorati Tags: Public Relations, advertising, media, blogs, social media, social marketing, media 2.0.