Brands are increasingly becoming networks

Brands will increasingly create their own content and will create new opportunities for publishers to offer them their best customised content since they are going to produce their own content with or without publishers.

You may think this is far from happening.

Well, think again. Companies like Apple, Nokia and Google have their own networks. They access millions of people at any moment. They have networks of users around the world, who are accessible via digital access, either through their own devices, via social networks, and blogs.

Wow! And where will the media business be in this new game?

Some important players are redefining what they think the market will be. For instance, during the Festival of Media - Switzerland 2011, Carolyn Everson, Facebook's vice president global marketing solutions said: “The departmentalised structure of big advertising agencies must die soon. The silos will crumble. There is no way to support a model that does not reflect the integrated and synergistic reality of the new consumers.” Carolyn worked for years in the traditional media business before joining Facebook in 2011.

Then you may think Facebook may have its own agenda in this game.

Well, here comes another statement, this time from Michael Donnelly, group director worldwide interactive marketing at Coca-Cola. He disagrees: “Carolyn is wrong. It’s not that those structures are going to die, they are dead.”

Wow, again!

And in the middle of all of that, in many meetings and seminars, other questions are being raised, like: “Don’t you think that indicators such as ‘cost per thousand’ and ‘impressions’ are archaic?”

New indicators that can measure engagement and effectiveness of communication in social networks will have to appear soon, and new ways of measuring the marketing and promotional efforts will come into being.

Today, there are important companies that are already investing more than 50% of their budgets in the digital world. This is not a trend, this is already a reality. And big players in the digital world, like Google, have the mobile landscape as their main strategy to grow business.

We have to retire some of our knowledge and concepts to give space for the world of communication and marketing to advance.

And as quickly as possible!

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