I'm constantly reminded of the similarities in the challenges faced by the music industry and the communications industry. Both are in transformation, both are learning that it's not about trying to dictate the customer experience, both are looking for new ways to create value. Both are moving from models that leverage scarcity to a place where they derive value by what Ian Rogers calls leveraging the scale of the web. Or what News Corp COO Peter Chernin has called 'content ubiquity' – making it as easy as possible for people to find your good stuff (and pass it on), facilitating the conversation, helping the community do what it wants to do.
And this is similar to the unbundling of music. In a transmedia-planning sort-of-way we have to get more comfortable with moving from packaging up communications in neatly defined entities to allowing the end users to construct their own experience from tools, pieces of content, applications, useful stuff that is out there. In this way good social media campaigns do not have a defined end point but build value over time. In this way we enable healthy ecosystems, the loosely-coupled value chains that generate value right across the network – value for all the parties that participate, contribute, create stuff. None of this is entirely new but I just needed to get that straight in my head. Thoughts, feedback, comments, very welcome.
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