What Does Your "Future Life" Look Like?

Today's blog will be the easiest and toughest read you have all day. I invite you to open your mind to a virtual world that will make the current day look like child's play. Literally. Play-Learn-Share-Experience.

It will all be a lot clearer after looking at the following slide and then spending a little time clicking through an excellent presentation given to the Digital Technology Symposium in Auckland, New Zealand.

The slide (you can click to enlarge) illustrates the generational differences back to 1922:
And here's the slideshow that takes us to a world that is as different as what living on Mars might be like. Hmmm, that different? Well, you decide.

Keynote Digitial Technology Symposium

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: elearning learning)

Since this is a blog that is mostly about radio I ask you...how, if this thesis is accurate, will radio compete in its future life?

Great Content vs.The Ratings

What was designed to be a presentation about what's important in digital, marketing, and advertising turns out to have value in related areas. Connect the dots between these three slides.


I make this challenge to myself everyday and to you: How can we effectively play the ratings game (both diary and PPM) and still adequately respond to the changing consumer realities (and desires) of today?

In some cases the ratings game requires us to consider 7 second talk breaks, long sets of (increasingly more commoditized) music with little other content, and fewer commercial breaks with more commercials piled together. These tactics (sometimes) work when the only goal is to get ratings. (Hey, I love getting high ratings too!) Now, go back and take another look at the slides and ask yourself how they mesh with generating word of mouth and causing reflective experiences?

Here's the full slide presentation:

New Digital, Seven suggestions to guide advertising in the right direction

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: future new)

"Don't Focus On The Product...

Focus on the experience you want to create, and build a system that gets you there".

Those words were said not with radio in mind, but with hard goods. As illustrated in this (goofy) picture:

Of course, our product is the experience...except if we are talking about HD radio and then it's about the hardware and not so much about the experience.

What was supposed to always be about the experience (whatever the intended experience was supposed to be) somewhere along the way the word experience was replaced by appliance. The appliance for music, news, sports, weather, traffic, etc. Like most appliances, after a while a new and improved appliance comes along replacing the old one. In this case that would be broadband and the internet.

Let's be honest. Radio was NEVER about the experience; programming was created in order to sell RADIOS. Now, as it turned out the experience was pretty good and it all worked out.

Today, as good as a lot of radio programming is, it's lost its luster as new more flexible platforms have come to market--especially with younger audiences.

What are we to do?

Focus on the user experience. How can we leverage our deep market penetration and our deployment of new platforms (broadband and internet) into a more competitive medium for today and into the future?

We need to think beyond "the morning show" and "10-in-a-row" and be open to and TRY new ideas (many of which will probably fail). "Focus on the experience you want to create, and build a system that gets you there".

And that brings me to the source of the quote: Peter Merholz who is the President of Adaptive Path a company that helps create products that deliver great experiences. Impressive group! Mr. Merholz put together an excellent presentation on the user experience and you can watch and listen to it right here:

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