Content has always been the driving force behind any new platform, its richness and ability to conform to the medium is what helps drive people to the source and then emanate it outward by sharing it across the internet and word of mouth.

From the onset of the internet, droves of informanics have been trolling the web for “cool stuff” to share. We mine the millions of pages that get updated every day for nuggets of gold that we can then impress our virtual circles with by being amongst the first to deliver it to the group.

The content pendulum has swung sharply over the years and has been gaining momentum resulting in a swing to one side much longer than it has in the past.

We find ourselves in a very interesting phase in both communications and technology. We can no longer create within a vacuum and simply expect people to eat it up. We cannot pull the wool over our client’s eyes and tell them that the public loves what has been done because they can now hear it directly from the public themselves.

What we have to become as marketers is really the role of facilitator to introduce ideas and then execute based on how the public reacts. The facade of the brand is now over and transparency reigns supreme.

If something isn’t communicating properly we will know within seconds of putting it out there. Social media adoption allows us to test the waters continually, nothing is ever final, it is an ongoing conversation that needs to be lead by a creative mind that can help steer the conversation in the right direction but that person can no longer dictate the message, it must become a truly collaborative process between marketers on behalf of the brand and the more vocal influencers on behalf of the public.

What I find particularly interesting is that for a hundred years our industry has been an agent of communication on behalf of our clientele. We have taken our client’s goals and objectives and tried our best to meet them through some logic, shaky research and lots of smoke, mirrors and magic. We have been seducing, enticing, manipulating and luring our audiences through the art of story telling and visual effects.

Now that the audience is in on the act we need to figure out a way to become agents of communication and feedback for our clients, we need to now work on the behalf of both brand and consumer in order to communicate properly.

This future is really unknown, the speed of change and the enhancement of technology is constantly keeping us on our toes and immediate adoption is typically a difficult thing for a huge brand that has established itself over decades to undergo.

Change is a very difficult thing to adopt so quickly but as the thought leaders within our industry we need to reformulate the way we work to regard change as a major part of the equation in everything we do.

A prospective client should be asking the agency “do you know what the public wants from us?” and that agency’s response should be “no but we are going to find out and then deliver it to them”.

There can no longer be this promise to deliver on something that hasn’t even been talked about and its our jobs to have those conversations with our audiences. There are countless ways to engage audiences in conversation and that is where the initial creativity needs to be focused, a pretty interface or a cool animation is not going to get us the answers we need unless its purpose is to get the public to react and tell us what they really want.

One of the ways we offer our own clients tremendous value is to be able to not only execute on a high level but to help them change based on the new paradigm that social media and consumer vocalization has introduced.

We have realized that results must be immediate and that is now the cornerstone of what our offerings are all about. We set out to get immediate results and then act upon them. We take the temperature of our audiences by engaging them in a two way conversation and then deliver based on that level of communication.

Sales has always been about introducing an idea and then carefully listening.

A great salesman listens to what his consumer wants and then tries to deliver based on how the consumer reaction is interpreted.

Social media and the like have given us the ability to go back to the traditional fundamentals of marketing to be able to listen.

A conversation is the most powerful tool in the communication toolbox, until now its been difficult to engage in that conversation because traditional media until now has been a one way transmission.

The future is now.

I see a future where we start creating conversational receptacles rather than brand destinations. A future where we are inviting the consumer to use their own persona to create a brand experience and where communication truly takes on a new meaning because its not just about telling people what we think they want to hear but actually listening to exactly what it is they want us to tell them about the products and services we are peddling.

Advertising no longer has to be a guessing game, brands pay good money for awareness and that awareness can no longer be shrouded in mystery. The web has become a powerful communications platform that allows everyone to amplify their voices. Brand perception is no longer hidden behind a beautiful person or a photoshopped image of your deepest desires.

Brand perception can no longer be manipulated, it is the public that now assumes control of the brand identity rather than the brand trying to form its own. It is the public that will tell us if something is resonating or not and it is our job to become interpreters of that message and then speak on behalf of the public to help brands steer their initiatives in the direction that has been communicated to us by audiences.

The web is now our most powerful tool and it is quickly re-shaping advertising, it is a multidirectional communications platform. A billion voices are speaking honestly about the goods and services we advertise and in real time within the actual context of their lives. We need to start listening in and taking these voices seriously so that we may better service the brands that entrust us with communicating on their behalf.