From Forbes ASAP Magazine - April-June 1995
From pie to sky, the natural evolution of
downsizing to looking to the future (plus some nasty mail) has refocused my
efforts on how and when to deploy information technology for the big win. Appropriately so, my new moniker is In Your
Face, based on the simple theorem that technology is rapidly moving from a back
office restructurer to a front office tool.
How does your company acquire customers? How does your company interface with those
customers once you have them. How does
your company keep those customers?
To understand that, let’s study the mass media
model.
When it comes to media, it's all a matter of
perspective. From a broadcasters point
of view, television is the sacred medium for news and entertainment, embodied
in the concept of public trust. On the
other hand, from the computer industry view, video is just a rich data type to
handle. From the markets view, (vendors
and advertisers) TV is just a slick medium for selling soap. Or toothpaste or cars or whatever. As an investor, I will take this final view
to determine the economic model that will help proliferate interactive video.
Come to think of it, ALL media (TV, radio,
newspapers, magazines) are just platforms for selling. Medium that are not platforms for selling
(movies, books, theater) are sold themselves. Even movies which for the longest time made sense on a pay per view
basis (theater, cable, video rental), are increasingly merchandising selling
tools. It is now obvious that the medium
is not the McLuhan-esque message, instead,
the medium is the market.
I am convinced more than ever that interactive
video is real and the next major growth market for technology, media and
communications. It is still confusing
what the economic and business model will be to stimulate and proliferate
IV. I am about to take a cut at it, here
it comes, boiled down to one memorable phrase:
Interactive video will be the teaser that sucks customers
into the virtual market place.
In other words, it's gonna sell soap.
