Predicting the death of anything is the easiest way to land in hot water.
The second easiest is clinging to once-disruptive concepts after they, in turn, have been disrupted.
For example, let’s take a journey back to February 1995. Newsweek, then a weekly national print magazine, published an article in which astronomer and author Clifford Stoll wrote these bold words:
“Visionaries see a future of telecommuting workers, interactive libraries and multimedia classrooms. They speak of electronic town meetings and virtual communities. Commerce and business will shift from offices and malls to networks and modems. And the freedom of digital networks will make government more democratic.
Baloney. Do our computer pundits lack all common sense? The truth is no online database will replace your daily newspaper, no CD-ROM can take the place of a competent teacher, and no computer network will change the way government works.”
Today, that pronouncement sounds incredibly naïve — and online posts ridicule the author for not seeing what transformational power the internet would bring.
But later in that same article, Stoll writes:
“[W]hat the Internet hucksters won’t tell you is that the internet is one big ocean of unedited data, without any pretense of completeness. Lacking editors, reviewers or critics, the internet has become a wasteland of unfiltered data.”
He then concludes his piece by saying:
“a poor substitute it is, this virtual reality where frustration is legion and where — in the holy names of Education and Progress — important aspects of human interactions are relentlessly devalued.”
Stoll was wrong about the plot. But I think he nailed the story. One might rightly argue that the modern web is one big “wasteland of unfiltered data” and that human connection is increasingly devalued.
Don’t confuse plot for story
In the context of any moment of innovation, people cling to the familiar. Author and philosopher Marshall McLuhan called this the “rear-view mirror:“
“We tend always to attach ourselves to the objects, to the flavor of the most recent past. We look at the present through a rear-view mirror. We march backward into the future.”
Yet marching backward into the future often gives us a good understanding (consciously or otherwise) of how the past informs the future.
In other words, we might get the future plot (events) wrong but get the story correct.
Consider the apocryphal story of Netflix’s triumph over Blockbuster. It’s too simplistic to say Blockbuster failed because it ignored the rise of streaming. Blockbuster recognized the shift in consumer preferences and behavior (the story), but the constraints of legacy systems and shareholder expectations slowed its response to change (the plot).
The company’s leaders weren’t wrong about digital vs. physical — they were wrong about the speed and format of the transformation.
Consider the total story
Today, marketers face a similar challenge. We stand at the cusp of an internet-sized disruption in how we reach, engage, convert, and serve audiences and customers. And that raises many questions about how to proceed. Here are a few:
- Will AI completely upend the content creation process? Which content pieces should we hand off to generative AI, and which merit human writers?
- Should we finally abandon PDF files as a delivery mechanism for lead-generation content? Can we predict what format will replace it?
- Are websites even needed anymore? Will AI-generated answers and other zero-click search results box out owned media (including websites and blogs)?
- Is there any future for e-commerce, or is it just a matter of time before all businesses get “Amazoned?”
One of my favorite books on marketing theory is The Marketing Imagination by Harvard Business School professor Theodore Levitt. In it, Levitt describes his “total product” concept, which offers a practical lens for balancing marketing plot predictions with our understanding of the story.
The “total product” concept is that consumers don’t buy a product or format — they choose the complete experience that best fits their current needs and context.
Apply that concept to cars, for example. The car’s features matter to the consumer, but so does the whole ownership experience (a nearby service center, a great warranty, and even digital content and ownership tools).
What does this have to do with content or marketing?
Think about aging formats like PDFs or PowerPoint presentations. They’ve been the norm in digital marketing for years.
Are they still serving your audience effectively? Content needs to be integrated, interactive, and engaging today. Do those formats deliver on those expectations?
But how do you predict a better format when one may not yet exist?
One answer (but not the only one) is to look at the digital experiences and marketing content you create as a total product — or a total story if you will.
For example, consider these options:
- Don’t abandon PDF files entirely. Instead, try to understand all the contexts that apply to your audience and address them. You could create structured content hubs to answer questions and provide thought leadership. Then, add a PDF as a downloadable, adjacent piece that offers a more visual layout or the functional interactivity of a form or template.
- Don’t worry about whether you should kill your website or blog. Figure out how to evolve your website into something else. For example, perhaps your corporate website evolves from that thousand-page online billboard to a simple hub designed to direct customers to apps, social media, or other owned media content brands. You can see this in action on Coca-Cola’s corporate site.
- Embrace multiple iterations of where your website might live. For example, you may decide that a partner for e-commerce for your products/services on third-party shops makes sense. They may be less profitable than your own shop, but customers may appreciate the more relevant context. For example, the entire buyer’s journey for Red Hat Linux’s complete educational platform can take place on the Amazon Web Services site.
- Instead of looking at generative AI as a way to create more efficiency in doing the things you already do, think about how it might prompt even greater wisdom and creativity in a human team.
Backing into the future
Content and marketing professionals are in precisely the same place Clifford Stoll was in 1995 — no more or less knowledgeable, talented, or prescient.
Focus on the story and allow the plot to unfold in uncertain ways. That’s how you’ll thrive.
Learn to see the past and use it to understand the story of the future without getting hung up on the details of the plot.
You’ll still be walking into the future backward. That’s inevitable. But you can use what you know to help you understand what you don’t — and prepare for whatever comes next.
It’s your story. Tell it well.
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Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute