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'Hubs with integrity'_Matt Hardisty.
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For all the cries of an egalitarian environment,
coupled with IBM's visions of 'Mom and Pop' stores selling olive oil
from remote parts of Italy to 'cash rich, time poor' consumers in urban
areas, the reality is that many are troubled by the sheer size of their
'dot'. While our 'Combated Folkdevils' are good at producing innovative content, they are bad at consolidating this into a viable online industry. |
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'Independent' enterprises in all sectors of the market seem to behave like a quasi-cottage industry - introverted and detached. Such organizational isomorphism maybe beyond their control, with a shift in sentiment towards funding and subcultural emulation, although a cross regional collaborative network promoting 'independent' talent has yet to emerge.
The end game of such a network would be to get exposure, to allow the 'Combated Folkdevils' to progress beyond simple 'contacts' and to facilitate business on a global basis. A new empathetic and 'street wise' resource is needed to enable their dreams to become a reality - a 'hub with integrity' or a 'virtual cultural intermediary' - to compensate for the increasing fragmentation in the workplace and a means through which the casual and often productive exchange of ideas can take place.
For while our 'Combated Folkdevils' are serving to breathe a breath of fresh air into business, stamping out the earlier apathy of Generation X and the British condition of it being a crime to take anything too seriously, 'business' must now similarly reposition itself. There is now a real need for our 'Combated Folkdevils' to share information about their often-common customers, and begin to collaborate and co-evolve in order to exploit the new opportunities presented by the multimedia economy. With a central site holding people together as an entity, the idea is that enterprises within the ecosystem can benefit from shared traffic across different ecosystems in a globally networked environment.
The recently launched burnitblue.com from Que Pasa provides an example of such a cooperative model. Burn It Blue is an evolutionary site that provides a showcase from the 'independent' British creative pool, from record labels to filmmakers, while also providing credible content for the astute cultural consumer. Not only does the site provide independent lifestyle brands (with little budget) the ability to reach larger audiences, but allows a marketer wishing to target an illusive fibre optic audience the chance to communicate in a credible fashion across a previously illusive network of channels.
It would seem therefore that the new economy, and more specifically the Internet, will force marketers to rethink communication models if they are to compete with the generative forces that are being developed for 'Meta Tribes' in the online realm. Is all this the future? Will we be witness to further mixed models of targeting and facilitation? My advice? Find the nearest 'Combated Folkdevil' and vibe hard, since they are the originators of new contemporary-minded mediascape.
