bonfire

There are many different theories floating around as to how the economy is effecting our business. Some we can fix and some we have no control over. It's a very trying time for advertising agencies and for the media companies that often work with agencies. That's why we've had to drastically reinvent ourselves to become smarter, faster and leaner. What's interesting is how brands have also been effected and how they too are becoming faster, leaner, and more media savvy.

I've recently read a blog written by Noah Brier of The Barbarian Group discussing how social media is changing the way brands interact with their consumers to a point where it is eliminating a need for media companies. As it seems, brands now more than ever are able to generate their own media, they no longer need newspapers or media outlets to be their middle-man of information. Brands are now able to post it directly on company blogs, twitter pages, facebook pages and then have that information spread by the consumer at a far quicker rate than any media source could imagine. I mean if you want news or information who better to go to than directly to the source? Below you will find Noah's blog post, I hope you find it as interesting as I did.

By Noah Brier of The Barbarian Group

"In response to articles by Scott Karp and Nick Carr about Google and the news business, Terry Heaton makes a point I’ve been trying to articulate for years : “The problem is that the distribution of content isn’t the real problem for media companies; it’s the growing ability of advertisers to reach people without media companies.”

Or, put another way, it’s the ability of brands to be their own media companies. If the Official Google Blog was a newspaper, it’s subscriber numbers would put it in the top 10 for daily circulation. Not only does that mean Google has less need for advertising, but it also means they have less need for media coverage generally. And it’s not just brands, it’s celebrities too. Shaq has 621,000 folowers on Twitter (and counting). As Kanye explained on his blog , “I told the media you can’t make up lies about me because I have a media outlet myself. Oh and sidebar I don’t know if everyone has realized this yet but I don’t do interviews if there’s anything I wanna say I’ll say right here on my own blog.”

Love to hear what you think about Noahs position.

To read more from Noah Brier visit http://www.barbariangroup.com/posts

To expand on this blog here is the clip of Ashton Kutcher winning the race to 1 million followers on twitter.What you will find most interesting is his comments at the 9:42 min-10:45 mark (you might want stop watching at 12 min mark when Diddy calls-it gets obnoxious).

"Look, at the end of the day this is about the changing of the guard. From the old way of consuming media to the new way. We together can decide, we can make the news on our cell phones, on our iphones, on our video cameras. We can edit the news, we can broadcast the news, we can consume the news. We can decide what we want to hear, how we want to hear it and we can get it faster on the web....This is statement that one man can have a voice as loud as an entire media company , you can have the voice as well and we can all have that voice."-Ashton Kutcher