Goldrush 2.0 and the Real World

Here's a bit of a rant... Is it just me or does the current buzz around web 2.0 remind anyone else of the 90s New Economy goldrush… remember when the normal rules of business/life wouldn't apply any more - eg projected customer numbers supposedly over-riding balance sheets?? The hype around blogs, search marketing blah shares the same sense of breathless excitement and throw-out-the-rule-book-ism that lost people money last time… Still,I don't want to sound like the oldest swinger on the blog (ha!): of course some of these phenomena like online communities lead and have led to important changes. As Nick was pointing out the other day, on-line WOM is likely to have an impact on brands through its permanence and wide reach. There clearly is also something going on about democratisation - both in terms of opinions (eg about brands) but also in terms of content -and marketers and 'brand owners' will need to take note. However, what takes me back to the late 90s is how the rise of the new always seems to bring about nonsense and charletanerie (is that a word?), at times meekly nodded to by old client and planner hands who really should know better. Take 3 current hot topics/buzzwords - democratisation, social networks, 'digital natives'. All interesting no doubt but all written about in terms of truisms or insights which, upon closer inspection, are just plain wrong. Democratisation. Consumers, so we are told, have changed. Not the passive receptors of brand messages of old 'any more' but 'now' participating in creating brands. Sorry but anyone with a brain before 2.0 realised some time ago that brands don't belong to the people who market products but are created in conjunction with the consumers who accept or reject them. The Net allows new forms of participation (and the jury's still out on how important they are/will be) but it does not change the principle, which just ain't new! Social Networks. Look at this amazing chart which was recommended by one of the planning bloggers. Maybe I'm a bit dense but is it saying that people are organised in communities which are linked to other communities by a common, if possibly tangential interest? I'm no sociologist but shouldn't there be tools through social network theory which explain things in just a bit more detail?? Digital Natives vs Digital Immigrants. When these two groups are being compared you could be forgiven for getting the impression that young people live their lives only in a two-dimensional digital capacity and actually don't have a three dimensional off-line existence too… Take this week's Campaign where Paul Frampton from Media Contacts reasons that search marketing has influenced consumers in such a way that 'Most consumers would not consider a purchase without researching it online'. OK, let's assume he meant 'most consumers in the UK', or, to be kind, "most consumer in the UK under the age of 25'. No, still doesn't work. Who googles food, drink, toiletries, or most fmcg products? And even for those products that you DO research online - how important and powerful are online vs offline influencers? (Nick touches on this in his piece on WOM) And possibly, most importantly, how does a more left brain activitiy like 'searching' stand up to all the right brain offline impressions you take in about a brand in a 3-dimensional world? So in summary, a caveat to Mr Client/Emptor…there are interesting new developments but they are interacting with, not over-riding human nature and reality as we know them - even though there are vested interests in making you believe otherwise!