“A channel that consumers control”

Last Friday, I quoted Buzzmetrics CEO saying that PR people were better suited to manage Word of mouth campaigns. WOM, being a channel consumers control, he said, was something PR people were comfortable with.

Scott Donaton, writing for Advertising Age (Aug 23 issue) makes an alarming observation, about how the audiences are poised to control the content of the media. He cites stats from a Communications Industry Forecast (Veronis Suhler Stevenson) that shows how people in the U.S. spent more on Communications in 2003, than marketers spent on ads. $178.4 billion Vs $175.8 billion. What did they spend it on? Movies, recorded music, cable TV, Web sites, video games etc.

“This is the latest, and most quantifiable, evidence of the transfer of control from content creators and distributors to consumers.”

His key point: Communicators are losing control of the message. Or, to put it another way, intrusion is out. Integration is the only solution for now. Or to put it in Donaton’s words from a recent Forbes’ interview:

“Advertising and marketing have been about intrusion to a passive consumer. They will now and in the future have to be about invitation.”