Inspiration for this post (a.k.a. the longest post ever) came from a book that a good friend recently gave me. The book is called The On-Demand Brand by Rick Mathieson, and it deals with the implications of today’s consumers tuning out marketing initiatives that don’t appeal to their increasingly connected, digital lifestyles. Naturally, I couldn’t get past page 1 without reading deeper into the words and being inspired to blog (I actually didn’t even get to page 1 – I’m still in the Roman numerals).
Today’s consumers are inclined to tune out what they don’t care about because new, emerging media gives them the means to do it. This is anything from recording shows on TiVo to choosing who to follow on Twitter. Like most things, if we didn’t have this media we wouldn’t know the difference.
I’m going to discuss why this new customizable media revolution is potentially dangerous to us as a society.
Then I’m probably to go off on a complete tangent and not even try to fight it.
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Overall— we don’t have time. We’re impatient. We want things five minutes ago. We long for any product, service, or technology that offers convenience.
But dig deeper into the true meaning of convenience.
Convenience encompasses anything that eliminates time wasted– i.e., time that we would rather be doing something else. Therefore, when we are dealing with services, messages, and products of no importance to us— we are wasting time.
So, by virtue of our desire for convenience, the most attractive feature to any product today is customization. Anything customizable is an added convenience to us, because we are choosing factors that only add value to our own lives. Personal choice is something that’s been around for— well, forever. However, it has never been so pronounced and emphasized as it is today; customizable media is infiltrating our lives. As a result, today’s brands are expected to provide personalized experiences while only a few short years ago, personalization was just an added bonus.
Uhm.. so what’s the problem?
One could argue that brands and new technology are causing us to become picky eaters– people that know what they like, so they stick with it and screw trying anything else. But then they miss out on food that could potentially become their favorite.
Media is becoming more customizable and relevant to our wants and needs, and we become even more inclined to ignore other things because it's the easy way out. We expect relevancy- it's convenient. But along with the picky eater metaphor, How do we know if something is interesting or of potential value to us if we’re tuning it out?
Are we slowing our own growth as a society?
A personal anecdote: when I was in 11th grade, I had an absolutely ridiculous American History teacher (Ray Edelman – a genius on another level). He used to fail us on every single assignment we turned in (on purpose), but our saving grace would be the “extra credit TV shows” that we could watch in order to pass. The program was usually The American Experience on PBS, with topics that ranged from The Battle of Bushy Run to The Kent State Massacre of 1970. These freaking 3-hour specials were usually on during ridiculous hours of the night (12am-3am) and we would be forced to tape them or suffer through them. Then, we had to take comprehensive, insightful notes on the show, and turn it in. It was dreadful as a 16 year old when I didn’t give two shits about history– but I had to do it to pass the class.
After doing the first couple shows, I became obsessed with it. It was suddenly interesting to me, and I found myself watching the programs when they weren’t assigned. Then I started watching The History Channel, just for kicks. The adrenaline rush from discovering a new interest carried over to finding more eclectic hobbies that I never considered.
I completely and utterly digress.
What happened here was that my history teacher forced us to try something new. We didn’t have a choice. If we did, we probably would have asked him to assign episodes of a show we already knew we liked— maybe Saturday Night Live or Friends. But if we did have a choice, we wouldn’t have learned about the Battle of Bushy Run or discovered other interests.
I’m relating this back to today’s technology and brands increasingly attempting to cater to what we say we like, because we don’t have time to deal with our non-interests.
The brunt of my argument: Would our society be better-rounded if there was no customization?
Emerging technology and media is providing the illusion that there is no time in today’s world to give “irrelevant” experiences a chance. It is forcing us to think we should only pay attention to what matters to us. So we do. And it’s a vicious cycle.
Are we inhibiting our own intellectual development?
Thoughts?
