Seeing The Future Through The Past

Thu, 31 Aug 2006 21:00:00 GMT

By Shelly Palmer
Chairman, Advanced Media Committee

After the Wright brothers did their “proof of concept” flight circa 1903, the fledging airline industry hit the road in search of development capital. They brought their proposal to America’s richest, most successful businessmen: the railroad barons. According to legend, they were summarily dismissed. It seems the railroad tycoons didn’t think much of the technology and felt it would never attain critical mass.

The most popular criticism of the railroad executives opines that they were too stupid to recognize that they were the transportation business, not the railroad business. And, more importantly, they should have recognized the airplane as the new new thing.

Anyone who lives in the present might look at this story see it as glaringly irrelevant. We don’t really know what the railroad guys were thinking, the story is oversimplified hearsay. And, it took 40 plus years for the airline industry reign supreme – an evolutionary time-scale by today’s standards. And, while we’re at it, what is the analog to the airline’s role in our industry. Surely not the Internet – that bubble has burst! Broadband? Ridiculous! WiFi? Keep dreaming. PVRs? Unlikely. So why tell the story at all?

Like all good history lessons, if we apply context, it can help us see the future through the past. The moral of this folktale is: know what business you’re in. In context, 1903 was a comparatively naïve time. Things moved slower and post hoc, ergo propter hoc (A Latin phrase traditionally interpreted as "After this, therefore because of this.") was reasonably assumed by almost everyone about almost everything. That was then.

Today, we move in Internet time and no one with half a brain would ever be self-important enough to posit that anything, but the most simple events, are causal. We live in an extraordinarily random universe with some version of chaos theory impacting every business decision – no matter how small. We also live in a world where technologies evolve decades before societal, cultural or business rules can catch up to them. And, unlike 1903, 2003 offers dozens (even hundreds) of new technologies competing for the title of rightful heir to television’s legacy. Who will win? What will the future look like? Where should you spend your time and resources?

While there are an infinite number of paths that the future will not take, there are far fewer probable paths. I don’t have “the” answer, but I can offer a platform for your personal crystal ball to rest upon.

We are coming to the age of mass personalization. Current technology enables and empowers distributors of media to touch their consumers in many different places in many different ways.

What business are you in? Certainly not television, not broadcasting, not cable and not satellite … you are a distributor of media and your future lies in millions of personal relationships that technology will enable you to forge over the very near term.

While your sales department is busy taking orders for traditional television advertising, trained salespeople from other distributors of media are actually selling non-traditional properties to your clients. Your clients don’t talk about it that much because no one property is that important. Right now, advanced media must be aggregated to be meaningful. There are few, if any, business rules for buying and selling, but they will evolve as needed. Advanced media is a dispassionate, self-regulating system.

Can you see the future through the past? It’s like a hundred little fledgling airline industries competing for critical mass. With the scatter market in the basement and an Olympic and election year coming, who has time to think about this? You must! Because like all good viral entities, by the time this one hits your radar, it will be too late.

-- Shelly Palmer is president of Palmer Advanced Media, a deep-knowledge consulting practice specializing in transition advisement for brand management and media companies.

31-Aug-06 4:00 PM

New York Emmy Awards - Articles

Seeing The Future Through The Past

By Shelly Palmer Chairman, Advanced Media Committee

By Shelly Palmer
Chairman, Advanced Media Committee