Who would have thought that boy-band Westlife would help me unlock the future of marketing? My mobile phone was top of mind - I had tried, messily, to post a blog via my phone to voice my irritation at the delay in getting the Diana Ross concert underway, but then the lights dimmed and I felt too self-conscious that the light from my phone would disturb others. I needn't have as every other person in the venue was busy with their phone too.
At first I thought myself very smart to a) have a blog, b) have a phone which, in theory anyway, could connect to the net and allow me to post and c) have the savvy to realize that the future of media is being written by teens with pimples and cell phones. However, when I realized that everyone else was doing the same (or appeared to be) my mind turned to gun-down-the-throat journo Hunter Thompson. His Gonzo description of personal journalism should now be considered in the plural, I mused. Ladies and gentlemen of the blogasphere - I give you Gonzi - the current (and I believe the future) wave of media - citizen journalism.
There was a lone candle flitting behind me - brought by some luddite who had either burnt her fingers too often on flaming Bic lighters at concerts or didn't have a phone with her. While everyone else lit up their cell phones when the Westflifer asked us to do so, I was immobilized by the sea of connectivity I saw in front of me. No longer would I have to wait to get home to share my excitement with friends nor, more specifically, turn on the radio or wait for the day's newspaper to experience the event vicariously. We had a taste of it during the 9/11 World Trade Centre attacks when one of the hostages called from a cell phone and, more recently and much more vividly, during an emergency landing of a JetBlue flight at LA Airport, where people on board the flight watched live footage of the landing while others posted Blogs and Podcasts about the experience.
In Sea Point, Cape Town I downloaded the Podcast and listened to JetBlue's captain taking through his landing options with the control tower on my iPod while on the treadmill at the gym. Not only is the world closer than it has ever been but, later this week when DSTV installs my DVR decoder - like my iPod that delivers content when and how I want it, my TV will do the same.
To technology mavens nothing I've said in this post is new. What is new, certainly for me though is that while the future may indeed belong to pimply youths, the present belongs to me and those of us who shelled out hundreds of Rands to see Diva Ross, live in nice homes and drive nice cars. Connectivity has become as commonplace as suburbia itself - the messaging to the youth may be different but the technology is the same.
Marketing has changed. It is the future and, as marketing strategists devise campaigns that get us talking - at the dinner table, on the phone or through blogs like mine, Intelligent Market Engagement as GlobalFluency puts it, has happened when I talk about white-lycra clad beauties and you know I mean Peroni.
Beer anyone?