Seth Godin on the New Middle
Seth Godin has an interesting little post that nicely summarizes the movement of the tectonic plates of marketing. Here's what he had to say:
Marketing dollars are getting spent on product placement (Panasonic provides plasma screens to Tony Danza, Pontiac gives cars to Oprah). Marketing dollars are also moving from magazines (stagnant) to adwords and online media (skyrocketing). Marketers are busy building viral campaigns, funding blogs, and yes, by the way, investing in products that are cool enough to actually blog about.
But who's deciding?
My guess is that this is not an organized, top down effort led by the fancy CMO or VP of Marketing. I think it's all happening around the edges while the middle (TV etc.) implodes.
This is accidental and random and it's going to get ugly, fast.
I wonder how long before smart marketers realize the new middle of the marketing department is all that extra stuff
As I read this, it makes me think just how many middles are feel pressure inwards and that could be fighting implosion. We've got blogging going after traditional journalism, podcasting going after radio, and maybe even vlogging going after TV on one level or another. We're also seeing greater and greater disintermediation of the production process, beyond the actual creational efforts. Amazing times indeed.
Of course, I don't think it's worth writing off anyone for any time soon. Despite the excitement, that's mostly what it is for the time being. Blogging has perhaps had the deepest impact so far, but the question still remains just what the relationship between blogging and traditional journalism is: who's leading who?