Option Paralysis

Briefly describe three digital trends you feel will have the most impact in your career
or industry over the two years. What opportunities do you feel these changes will
provide to smart marketers?

Blogging has opened up a whole new realm for people to express opinions, creations, and other unique content with little or no technical website building knowledge required. This has created an extremely dynamic landscape on the Internet, allowing people from all walk of life to make themselves heard, but as with the internet itself, there are some users with pure intentions, and some without. This has lead to things like music blogs that post links for full downloads of new album releases. They are not technically hosting the files (most of the time they are mass upload sites like MegaUpload, Mediafire, and Rapishare), so they are not legally responsible for posting them. Obviously this has dealt a blow to people who make their living from recorded music, since you basically have to type in the name of a record on Google and then put Mediafire after it and you can have it in a matter of minutes. This could also be a great opportunity for people to advertise as well though.


Legal digital distribution has changed the way we consume practically everything as well, people can buy things through the internet (whether it is a physical product like a t-shirt or a digital one like an mp3), and this cuts out a few steps in the distribution process (for example, after manufacturing it’s sent to wholesalers, who then break the product down for retailers, then finally to the end-user). This has obviously made things less expensive to deliver to the customer, allowing for slight price drops in things purchased online as well. Advertising on websites like Amazon.com and Overstock.com could prove incredibly beneficial to the savvy marketer because as more and more people figure out that they can distribute things for cheaper online, the most they will take advantage of sites like Amazon.com and similar ones.

Social Networking has also had a huge impact on the entertainment industry. If you said 10 years ago that you could hear an obscure proto-death metal band from New Zealand’s unreleased 1980s demo recording at the click of a button, most people would have called you mental. But nowadays we have a wealth of knowledge that is ever expanding (of course, with information and misinformation alike), and being able to connect with people all over the world has really brought that to a new level. The smart marketer can utilize this infrastructure and the connections they make to create a buzz about their product or service. The amazing and somewhat sad thing in our era is that it’s not always the most quality thing that becomes successful, but the most talked about and overexposed thing.