As Trading Systems Multiply, Media Industry Must Refocus on Relationships

This commentary is excerpted from Jack Myers' 1998 book: Reconnecting with Customers: Building Brands and Profits in The Relationship Age.®

Originally Published in 1998:Mass-marketers will continue to adopt online methods of marketing communications to extract new efficiencies in directly reaching their consumer targets. Disintermediation is going to affect consumer markets, and it is also affecting business-to-business markets such as advertising and media buying. Ultimately, the speed of that disintermediation will be determined by each industry's acceptance of information and trading technologies. However resistant industries might be, such progressions are inevitable.

I foresee a simultaneous evolution in the media and advertising industries of both efficient online trading systems and enhanced brand and marketing-oriented relationship building. This will result in two diametrically opposed marketplace dynamics:

· commodity trading - the creation of fully automated and programmed online trading marketplaces for the most commoditized of buys;

· value-based relationship management - increased dialogue and interaction to establish long-term relationships directly between businesses and their customers with the goal of differentiating one company's marketing capabilities and brand values from the homogenized system of commoditized interactions.

For customers, the challenge will be to relate to these paradoxical dynamics by:

· developing capabilities that encourage, support and reward their suppliers' initiatives to develop and enter into marketing-based relationship;

· aggressively supporting and advancing systems to take advantage of electronic purchasing and assuring that they adapt to a market that will almost certainly become more automated as the Internet and interactive media develop.

The key for generating value, for both buyers and sellers, will be the degree to which they can facilitate processes that build direct and relevant relationships with customers and suppliers in an era of increasingly automated exchanges that serve to commoditize the marketplace.

For more than two decades, Jack Myers has been the media industry’s leading analyst, researcher and advisor on relationships among marketers, agencies and media sellers, providing business development services and custom insights on relationship best practices to more than 250 companies. Jack's stunningly visionary perspectives from 1998 focus on the emergence of a new age in media and advertising, an age that would be defined by both advanced technology and enhanced relationships. To obtain a full copy of The Relationship Ageseries or to discuss Jack's consulting and advisory services, contact jm@jackmyers.com The Relationship Age is a registered trademark of Jack Myers.