The Anti-Industrial Revolution
by Fred on 12/10/06 at 11:01 am
2 comments
Do you sense change?
Not change like always (things are constantly changing) but real change. Not change like we saw in the late 90’s, where the internet heralded ‘a new age of doing business’. That turned out to be a hot-aired crock, with business models built on inflated egos and mouths like the Grand Canyon. Not change like the early part of this decade, where people scrambled for property worldwide and gold became super-shiny.
I’m talking about change like radical, memorable, era-defining change. Like the Industrial Revolution; like Post-Depression unity; like the wheel, the Model T or the lightbulb.
Something is bubbling under. Big corporations are falling, fast. Small companies are growing very very big, very very quickly (Google is only 8 years old). People are doing things differently. Way differently.
Bestselling business books include ‘Small is the New Big’; humble blogs are taking on mighty media; small tech companies are taking chunks of market away from the big behemoths; and runaway start-up ad agencies are stealing accounts from big, cobweb-laden bureaucrats.
Can you feel it? I’m not naive enough to forget that ‘change’ articles come along every year, but somehow we are seeing it for real – right in front of us. Around us, Web 2.0, Skype, wireless communications, etc. – it all heralds something new in the air; a fresh wind of business savvy. I call it the ‘Anti-Industrial Revolution’: People are working from home; family is back ‘in vogue’; 45 mins of traffic every morning is becoming unfeasible; bosses treating you like crap is even more unfeasible; and the big world out there is suddenly a lot smaller and closer than you think.
Your ‘target-market profile’ now includes a guy in Kazakhstan – as long as he’s got internet access.
Fred Roed is the marketing guy in the Ideate crew. He runs a web marketing company called World Wide Creative and loves writing about people out there doing marketing right. View more articles by Fred.
Shane
Oct 12th, 2006
It would be good for you to read The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman sometime; he talks alot about this change.
Karin
Oct 12th, 2006
To me it feels a bit like: Back to Basics ?
It’s not just that ‘marketing’ is changing, but the whole business concept is changing and IMHO for the better. Communication lines are becoming shorter (internet – email – mobile phone) and ‘doing business’ is more and more changing into one-to-one interactions between buyer and seller.
Like way back in the old days: local marketplace