The following article is long by current blog standards. I try to tie together a few thoughts that are of concern to anyone with an interest in how policy changes may impact their industry, interests or personal lives. I try to make a case that the current global economic and political environment will lead to a fight for message control and how issues are defined. This activity, combined with a dramatic change in the capabilities of (and access to) a new communications infrastructure, requires a new way of thinking about communications campaigns.

Consider Just How Fundamentally The World Is Changing:

A new global financial environment that is highly volatile and still too risky to predict. A new White House, all new cabinet, and new Congress about to be swept into office by a highly energized and engaged electorate, including four million new voters. A populist mandate, not necessarily for any specific action, but for long-lasting, fundamental and as yet undefined change itself. A new regulatory environment with new laws, new regulations and new standards about to become new realities. A new role for governments as bankers and investors in a truly global economy. Constant communications. Constant news. Constant action and reaction. Never-ending political campaigns – not appeals for votes but for support for (or opposition to) proposed changes.

Now Consider The Fight That Is About To Emerge
As The Political Mood And Global Events Give Way To The Next Stage:
Specific Proposals For Change.

The nation’s anxieties are so intense that serious consideration is being given to holding a lame duck session of Congress even before the Inauguration and the new Congress convenes in January. The economy, the war in Iraq, the global war on terrorism, education and healthcare will be at the top of Congress’ agenda, but the agenda will not end there. And, even if there is a lame duck session, the momentum for action will be far from vented by the time of the Inauguration. By then the flurry of proposals for change that exists now will become a tsunami of proposals, not limited to any particular issue.

Although partisanship-as-usual was ultimately overwhelmed to the degree necessary to address the debt crisis and enact a “bailout” bill, it happened neither quickly nor well and it took a panic to force it. It would be na?ve to believe that a new era of bipartisanship has been born. As theories start being translated into action, both honest ideological differences and parochial political interests will become much more in evidence.

A debate will emerge over each aspect of each call for change. The intensity of the debate will be unprecedented because of what will be at risk: fundamental rules of the game in matters as wide ranging as how the global financial markets are structured, how industries are regulated, who pays how much for healthcare, and how entitlement programs continue to be funded. In this environment, every enterprise in the nation, along with many throughout the world, will have vested interests they will want (need) to protect and promote.

This will not be a quiet process. Enterprises from the left and right, for profit and not-for-profit, public and private, local, regional, national and international will focus on the issues that concern them. They will come to an understanding of what the potential impact may be, and they will come to the brutal realization that they have a mission critical need to communicate to their members, customers, investors, vendors and the public at large to build support as powerful as possible for their agenda. They will want to take control of the critical messages that define their issues. They will need to develop ways to mobilize their supporters. They will fight to expand their base.

And it will all happen in a new era of digital communications. In real time. Largely uncontrolled. A platform for every message. Non-stop. Global.

The Noise Level Will Grow And The Very Nature Of The Noise Will Change.

Although global banking action may have put the brakes to what looked like an inevitable crash of the debt and equity markets, it seems clear that a worldwide recession is emerging and that it will be significant both in terms of length and depth. The strong economy we enjoyed for so long was largely fueled (and enjoyed) by consumers – and consumers will be hit very hard as the crisis in the capital markets moves to “the real economy.” Billions of dollars of equity the consumer had in their homes has evaporated, and with it so has the buying power they had when they were able to tap that equity to buy another flat screen TV, fund a vacation, or send a kid to college. They now find themselves with debt obligations higher than they thought they’d face just at the same time as crucial expenses such as gas and food have increased in price. Without the ability to draw on their home equity or credit cards, they have less ability to meet their expenses. This is about to be exacerbated as headlines about esoteric debt instruments convert into headlines about layoffs and higher unemployment.

The consumer market won’t die, but it is likely to be in a coma of some degree for a substantial period of time. What will that mean for all those advertising dollars that have traditionally been spent to get at the consumer’s wallet? Why would that money be spent now when the wallet is depleted or the consumer is not ready to open it out of fear from uncertainty?

So here is a certainty: advertising budgets of those who market to the consumer will be slashed. This doesn’t mean advertising will stop, but much higher efficiency will be sought. We will see traditional appeals for the wallet move to the web and other new media, where buying decisions can be made quickly, impulsively and at lower overhead to the seller.

This will leave TV and radio stations with major inventories of unsold time and it will leave newspapers and other print media with unsold space. The print media will reduce their unsold inventory of space by reducing the number of pages they print and we will continue to see print media shrink in size (and continue to devolve as a business). But TV and radio stations cannot expand or contract time. They’ve got it for sale and they’ll keep dropping the price until it becomes so compelling that buyers will step forward. And that will lead to a change in the “noise” that hits people in their everyday life: the lower priced advertising will attract those who have the critical vested interest to appeal to hearts and brains for support, supplanting those who have historically appealed to wallets for sales.

Imagine a pie chart of advertising messages that reach people. The chart has two slices: one represents advertisers going for their target’s wallet and brand loyalty for their product or service, and the other represents those going for the target’s emotional and intellectual buy-in for their support in one form or another. Although the latter has grown in size over the past few years, for decades the former has been the bigger slice of that pie by far. We have lived in – and been shaped by – an environment that has been inundated with messages that in most basic terms have said: “Buy Me.” That is about to change to an inundation of messages that say: “Support This Position.”

Just as the constant barrage of “Buy Me” messages created a consumer-driven culture, the “Support Me” messages will also create a culture. That new culture, which will emerge and evolve over time, will be different than the culture that grew with the Post World War II period of expansion and the Baby Boom. It is probably too soon in the process to predict exactly what that culture might look like as it becomes real.

However, it’s not too early to come to a conclusion about what’s at risk. Just look at how the global capital system has changed in the past few weeks: a change in ownership and control of the world’s most important financial institutions, a substantial negative change in the value of virtually every publicly traded enterprise in the world, and a change in the geographic centers of power in our nation’s financial industry, with the equity market still in New York, but the center of gravity for the debt market now in Washington. Those are pretty momentous and game changing events. But the list of such significant change has already grown longer since the debt crisis, and it would be a mistake to think it won’t grow even longer.

And in every instance of proposed change – each carrying its own dramatic, fundamental and debatable set of possible consequences – proponents and opponents will arise and vie to control the message and frame the debate.

A chorus of diverse voices will emerge, each arguing for their point of view: employers and unions; those who want to focus on the critical issues associated with whether and how we exploit resources and conserve our environment; those with more “family room” issues such as whether money goes to fund school lunch programs or school music programs; and those who just want to use a time of turbulence as an opportunity to advance their own political or social agendas.

As more enterprises realize the risks inherent in how proposed changes could touch them, they will join the public debate. Then, as the time for debate ends and the time for voting or adoption of administrative action nears, they will raise the volume of their messages even more. This will create a cacophony of messages that will become increasingly louder – and more difficult to break through. And to achieve that will require a radically different view of how to think about communications campaigns.

“Advertising” Will Become Obsolete.
So Will “P.R.”

The communications industry and communications campaigns have distinct sub-segments that are often defined by virtue of the distribution channel used to communicate a message. For example, ”advertising” is defined by virtue of the fact that the message is communicated using distribution channels that are bought. “P.R.” refers to using ”free” space or time that is “earned” on a distribution channel. “Interactive” refers to using a digital distribution channel. Because distribution channels have defined the communications industry, they have also defined the borders and scopes of communications campaigns. As a consequence, communications efforts are too often approached with thinking that is neither robust nor bold enough. It would be a serious mistake to continue that type of thinking under any circumstances. In the current and emerging environment, the mistake could be fatal.

After all, what advertising has in common with P.R. or social media or event marketing or any other communications specialty is one thing: the effort is undertaken to get specific messages to specific audiences to achieve specific results. So why define a communications effort by virtue of the distribution channel? Why not define the communications effort by virtue of its goal rather than its process?

Enterprises that reject a distribution-centric definition of communications in favor of a goal-driven approach are achieving a new level of effectiveness and efficiency through truly integrated campaigns. The successes of these campaigns will be emulated. Over time, the silos of communications “practice groups” will fall. Eventually, neither the communications industry itself nor communications efforts will be defined by virtue of a distribution channel. The message will become paramount.

The Medium Is The Message.

I was graduated from George Washington University in 1967. I majored in philosophy. I thought then (and still believe now) that I and my friends were studying philosophy at the same time that a major new idea was emerging. I confess that I cannot summarize it better than this Wikipedia entry (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_medium_is_the_message):

“The medium is the message” is a phrase coined by Marshall McLuhan meaning that the form of a medium embeds itself in the message, creating a symbiotic relationship by which the medium influences how the message is perceived, creating subtle change over time. The phrase was introduced in his most widely known book, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, published in 1964.^[1]media themselves, not the content they carry, should be the focus of study; he said that a medium affects the society in which it plays a role not only by the content delivered over the medium, but by the characteristics of the medium itself…

McLuhan made a legitimate point that is still relevant. But today, there is a collateral statement that may be even more important:

The Message Is The Medium.

When engaged in truly integrated communications campaigns (as opposed to “an ad campaign” or “an interactive campaign,” etc.) the message is launched to targeted audiences through any distribution channel that makes sense for the effort, limited neither by geography, deadline, nor language. The message reaches its desired audiences when they watch TV, when they work at their desks, and wherever they go, with unprecedented power, specificity and immediacy. For example, iPhone and its forthcoming clones will deliver messages with compelling impact tailored to the individual’s interests at the spot they are standing at the moment they are standing there. The fully executed integrated campaign results in messages becoming virtually ubiquitous with their intended audience, based on the person’s individual’s interests and their prospects for taking an action such as supporting a bill or buying a product.

McLuhan was right in that the medium can deliver a message with an impact that influences or even becomes more potent than the message itself. But, today (and increasingly so in the future) messages can be so relevant to the target’s interests, so constant, so powerfully presented, and coming at them in so many ways that the specific distribution channels employed to take the message to the target will become irrelevant and largely unidentifiable. In that case, the message becomes ubiquitous and more powerful than ever because, for all practical purposes, the message itself becomes the medium.