Immediately after I saw Eric Schmidt's quote fluidly stream across the ticker on the bottom of CNBC - I thought - He's certainly famous and wealthy, but he's dead wrong on this one. The obvious question is clearly what could Eric Schmidt, leader of the most powerful company on the planet, be wrong about? And, was I capable of accurately understanding the totality of his statements with just a simple headline? Truth is that nothing is for certain, but even if his quote was taken out of context - it brings up a very important topic to discuss regarding the future, and our media consumption habits. So, I decided to simply take the quote at face value and address the matter at hand.

Eric Schmidt was quoted on CNBC as saying "Online video viewing will completely replace TV viewing in the near future." In what was a clear effort to transport TV advertising dollars and have them be newly applied towards digital experiences. It also made it abundantly clear, that due to his position and current thinking, that Google will be operating under this impression for the foreseeable future.

Again, clearly this was a statement geared for advertisers as it was uttered at an advertising get together. And in today's advertising landscape - things move extremely quickly. And while more traditional media's like newspapers and magazines are really starting to feel the pain - TV ad spending is still in the midst of a fairly decent ascent. His words were clearly intended to slow down that move of ad dollars being spent on TV.

Getting back to the key issue at hand.......

Why is Eric Schmidt wrong? He's wrong for a myriad of reasons, yet amazingly there's still an ounce of truth in his statement. The truth lies in the portion of the statement regarding the pipeline through which the content is being delivered - not by which utility or device the content is being viewed.

What all seems so very simple on face value becomes quite complex when one looks at the relevant research and truly understands the nations's and consumers past, present and future behaviors in this world where the rapid proliferation of technology is only superseded by the speed of light.

We have a pop culture of families, friends etc. gathering around the TV to consume various kinds of content for endless hours of entertainment. In the early years, the number of channels were limited as was the number of cable channels and assortment of TV's and peripherals. Today, there seems to be a TV and a TV channel for everything. Off the top of my head I can count five channels dedicated to food alone. Heck, it was just yesterday that I saw the news break regarding the new channel created exclusively for canines. If one thinks that we've witnessed a tremendous amount of changes in the land of the TV networks - they haven't seen anything yet.

Rome is about to fall. The question is - What represents Rome in the statement?

Again, It's an extremely fair statement to say that we've got an American culture,for the most part, built around the major TV network's programming. These TV networks have been around since the invention of the TV, and thus have created a scenario in which the networks have and continue to still yield an unprecedented amount of control. Imagine, if you're part of the younger demographic, a TV that has 3 channels and you really don't have much a choice regarding what type of programming you're going to watch. I know it's probably painful to think about living that way, but that's just the way the world was when the world was controlled by the big three TV networks. Back in those early days, consumers were clearly at the mercy of the TV networks - my how times have changed.

While there are definitely going to be continuing, seismic changes on the way to the once impervious TV network model - The TV itself will continue to reside as a centerpiece for social activity in households around the world. Until the day, much like every other industry, when the once almighty TV networks completely lose their luster - it's coming sooner than most think. And that's where the issue in his statement resides.

The key mistake, in my opinion, that Mr. Schmidt made was that he failed to differentiate between the TV networks and the TV itself as a stand alone device. This may seem like a small oversight, but in fact it's a major oversight. It just takes a few moments to look around to become aware that we're already seeing signs re: the confluence of the web and TV in the new generation of TV's and Blue-Ray players etc. These devices are beginning to integrate with on-line content companies such as Netflix, Pandora and much to Mr. Schmidt's delight - YouTube. It's literally written all over the boxes and devices themselves. So, in a sense, there will be internet content on a TV device.

The 64 million dollar question is whom will own the bandwidth that's delivering the content.

Let's try to have a wee bit of fun and do a little exercise - try to project yourselves out into the future.

The massive movie theatre complexes will have gone the same way as the once thriving independent movie theaters that populated the landscape in the 30's,40's,50's,60's and 70's. People will congregate at their own dwellings as the content will be available directly to them in their own homes - making the theatre mega-plexes as irrelevant as your once favorite eight track player.

By this point, based on the home buyers' new behavioral patterns - architects and the likes will begin to design homes with larger congregation spaces and rooms specifically designed to accommodate large groups of people for a myriad of entertainment purposes.

Now let's drift back to the present....

Let's take note of the enormous amount of research that clearly indicates the smaller the screen the less amount of time it engages the consumer. This vast amount of research pretty much assures us that consumers of all ages won't be consuming online video in the way that perhaps Mr. Schmidt is envisioning. Therefore, both now and in the future, it will still be a TV or perhaps a larger projection system that serves as the device for which the majority of media is consumed. Granted, a fair amount of content will be consumed "on the go" via an Ipad or comparable device. This will give the Google's of the world the lion's share of the ad dollars since they're directly distributing the content. However, the bulk of the content is what I'm keying in on. And, to clarify Mr Schmidt's point, it will be the TV networks, not the TV, that will all but evaporate if they don't radically change their modeling. And, honestly while that help them a great deal just based on using the most simplistic of metrics. The players that serve up the content will have to innovate to control the advertising dollars - it's their pipe. The once named SBC communications was a company that is really good at innovating in these types of scenarios

This is where the bifurcation needed to be addressed and more clearly defined by Mr. Schmidt between the actual TV as a entertainment consumption device and the TV networks that he was busy trying to take advertising dollars from.

Regardless of what's feeding the content to the TV through the current TV network structure. In my opinion, it's the network structure that Mr. Schmidt should be specifically referencing and therefore he should clarify his statements. As, both now and in the future, online video will be delivered via the TV to the population the majority of the time via a third party "pipe" owner.

Depending on who controls the bandwidth will determine who gets to decide how personal, relevant brand experiences will be inserted into the digital, video equation. And, furthermore this will determine who gets the lion's share of the advertising dollars. Again, some innovation required here.

It's sometimes amazing how a simple quote can evoke such a visceral response, but I simply felt that Mr. Schmidt was telling only part of a very complex situation and it was going unchallenged to perhaps a more granular point of view.

But, I'm not Eric Schmidt - although I'd love to have his bank account balances. Writing this piece was a sort of therapeutic effort for me. I hope that you took something positive away from reading it.

If Google starts to get into the business of owning the "pipes" and bandwidth - then they'll truly take the lion's share of advertising dollars.

To end on a note of interest, I'm writing this note while Google is trading at an all-time high - GO GOOG !!!!!!

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How are you Managing?

Experiential is gaining more and more share of the marketing department's attention and resources. We are interested in learning more about how you manage.

The EMF and George Brown College in Toronto, Ontario are conducting a survey to gain an understanding of the experiential industry and the software solutions that are helping to power it. What solutions does your organization use to manage process and streamline communications? How effect are they? How are your clients gauging success?

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Experience As The Salient Differentiator

There are and have been some great, and extremely smart people in the experience marketing space for some time now.  My good friend that sadly passed away, David Wolfe, was a genius in this space.  Also, it would be completely irresponsible of me to not point out the revolutionary and evolutionary work that Pine and Gillmore have done and are continuing to do in the space. They put out their book “The Experience Economy” which feels like it’s been out since around the time the earth was cooling - the exact release date escapes me.  

Suffice it to say that the above mentioned individuals are among many true pioneers in the space.  They’re not individuals that have been hyped up by holding companies promoting their books and their own businesses in kind - they actually have things that are intelligent to say.  Their reputations stand solidly on their body of work in an experience marketing space that, at the time they started, wasn’t even being recognized.

I recently wrote an article entitled, “Playing The Touchpoint's Like a Concert Pianist”, which was meant to briefly drive home the point that each part of the consumers’ experience is just as important as the next.  To a consumer, each and every individual interaction with a brand is interpreted as one seamless experience.  Consumers don’t differentiate an interaction with the guy/gal driving the brand’s truck and/or the 100 million dollar advertising spend intended to guide their perception of the brand.  

To the consumer, every interaction they have with a brand, falls along the same their same experience continuum. 

Smart brands focus on all of the potential points of interaction (touch points) so that they can align their brand’s reality with the perception that consumers have in their head.  Brands can absolutely do this extremely effectively.  It’s not as if brands are all busy just arranging deck chairs on the Titanic and hoping that you’ll choose them - they are very actively campaigning for your discretionary dollars!

Which brings me to another piece that I recently wrote that was entitled, “ One Hundred Percent Commoditization Resistant”. This piece was purposed to dive head first into the stark reality, like it or not, everything essentially becomes commoditized.  And, like it or not again, the only thing that can’t be commoditized is thought.  Thought, of course, is at the genesis of all experiences.  It’s the creativity that oozes out of this essential thought that helps serve as the guiding hand that creates and subsequently constructs the experiences that a brand puts out there to exquisitely and accurately represent themselves.

It goes without saying that there are different modalities of experience.  However, I’m mainly focusing in on the experiences that brands spend their money on.  These are the experiences that, if successful, perfectly craft the notion of their brand’s essence, and more importantly strum the correct strings in your internal, emotional guitar to drive you to purchase the goods or services that any particular brand is offering for sale.

More and more these days, given the fact that everything is essentially commoditized, the experience the brands put forth is what essentially serves as the salient differentiator between brand A and brand B - assuming that both brands are equally valued.  

So the question then becomes how does a brand focus it’s efforts to ensure that they put forth a compelling, authentic, meaningful and relevant brand experience that’s going to appeal to you more than the competitions’ experience marketing efforts?

 As more and more brands focus on experience marketing - they’ve begun to work from the shelf outwards.  In doing so they start by thinking about the point of purchase and work themselves all the way out to the beginning of the day when a consumer’s alarm clock goes off and their eyes open to fearlessly attack the day as they did the last.

As a marketer, developing the sustainable IP that comprises these experiences is absolutely the best job in the world.  This position transcends creative - it transcends strategy - it transcends everything because it resides in a realm of reality that doesn’t differentiate between any of these.  It resides in the mind of the consumer. Hopefully, we’ll see more agencies creating positions that bring in people that first and foremost understand the consumer from a behavioral POV, and also have the talent to transcend all of these once separated skill sets.  

If all of this begins to happen then it will allow agencies and brands to be able to create 100% compelling, 100% yessable experiences that leave the consumers awe struck, buying your brand, and anxiously awaiting the next experience that’s headed in their direction. And, that after all, is what it’s all about!