Jeff Jarvis has a great post analysing Bob Garfield’s latest thoughts. Both well worth reading in full.
Bob is scathing about the optimism (read denial) of big media owners:
Balding’s set of facts comes courtesy of the proliferation of skimpy freebies, such as Metro, which are to newspapers what Skittles are to cuisine.
I also liked this:
When (P&G) Chairman-CEO A.G. Lafley says, “We need to reinvent the way we market to consumers,” he doesn’t mean, “We need to find a place to amass 30 million people at a time so we can tell them not to squeeze the Charmin.”
Here’s Jeff:
Now marketers and customers can have their transactions and conversations directly. That is to say, we the customers can get the information we want about products straight from sellers and the more that happens, the less those sellers need to waste money on giving us messages we did not ask for and do not want (aka, advertising). The more that happens, the less money they will spend on ads. Total ad spending will, indeed, decline.
That horrible crashing sound you hear is a gravy train derailing
