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September 30, 2005
Media c’est moi
I often talk about how today’s consumers are avid consumers of media: They gobble up television, radio, web-based content (music, downloads, podcasts, blogs, wikis, etc.) and even print with the ferocious appetite of a teenage boy on a growth spurt.
This is significant to internal communication for two reasons: 1) Employees’ unrelenting media consumption leads to feeling full—overloaded and tired—which affects their capacity for company communication; and 2) Employees expect the same high levels of entertainment, timeliness, relevance, and interaction from internal “media” as they get from external media.
Most communicators I talk to are taken aback by the implications of this phenomenon: How can internal communication possibly meet the expectations of info-overloaded, media-savvy employees, given the limitations of a shoestring budget, overtaxed staff, outdated technology and nervous lawyers?
I’ve got lots of suggestions (send me an e-mail at alison.davis@davisandco.com) but that’s not the purpose of today’s entry. The purpose is to freak you out even more, because yesterday I realized that the problem of media mania is even more acute than I thought. People are not only consuming media, they’re living it. Media has become something you participate in, not just a spectator sport. We’re not just watching the story; we’re part of the story. Media c'est moi.
The revelation came when reading a wonderful online column, “Online Spin,” by Shelly Palmer. I urge you to read it for yourself—even though you have to register (it’s free), but I’ll also give you the gist of what Mr. Palmer was talking about.
Turns out he was on a JetBlue flight from Long Beach, Calif., to New York, with a whole planeful of people who had lived through the traumatic JetBlue Flight 292 from Burbank, which had to make an emergency landing at LAX because of trouble with the plane’s landing gear.
Rather than being anxious, these passengers were “living large and loving life,” writes Mr. Palmer. They had been treated royally by JetBlue (luxury hotels and limousines), but more importantly, they had enjoyed 15 minutes of fame—interviewed on morning shows and by network news.
However, Mr. Palmer writes, the part that fascinated him the most was “the DirectTV factor.” JetBlue offers satellite television at every seat, and on Flight 292, “almost everyone on the plane was tuned into a news channel that was covering their emerging situation.”
As Mr. Palmer learned by talking to the plane’s passengers, “"for several hours as they circled Los Angeles, they watched and listened to reporters and pundits ponder their fate.
“As far as I can tell, this is the first time in history that people who were participants in an emerging, evolving news story (that could have ended in their own death) were able to watch their fate unfold, live, with expert commentary on several different channels.”
And, as he writes, “there is no way that anyone in the media business can let this bizarre combination of life, media, technology and art . . . go by without comment.”
We’re losing the separation between media and self—the media has become us (reality shows) and we’ve become media (Hurricane Katrina and JetBlue). I’ll leave the existential issues aside for now and leave you with this: In a world where employees are part of external media, does their relationship—their connection—with internal communication have the same intimacy?
If not, what needs to change?
Posted by Alison Davis at September 30, 2005 11:07 AM