First came the flag. Don’t Tread On Me. Hoist the Red Banner. A simple slogan, visible, to excite and incite. Then came the broadsheet. Screaming headlines. Remember the Maine. All very lean forward. The lean back world of television could certainly excite but had a lot of trouble inciting. I guess getting off the sofa and into the streets required more inertia busting than was possible. Action became, for the most part, passivity. We saw hints of change in the Philippines where simple jokes passed by SMS so undermined the credibility of the regime that it simply collapsed. And now the internet.
A few months ago the Iranian theocracy almost toppled with Facebook, aljezeera.com and Google bringing masses into the streets. Then Tunisia. And now Egypt. What was the first thing Mubarak did? He shut off internet access. And that became the initial popular demand. Imagine "I want my MTV" with a bloody shirt. Cell phones sending images and video around the world in an instant, bringing masses into the streets. Kinda makes Glen Beck seem a little pathetic.
Barack Obama won the election of 2008 because he mastered the use of email and the web significantly better (and earlier) than anyone else. The Egyptian revolution will succeed because the people there understand this medium better (and earlier) than their (former) masters.
Jerry Shereshewsky has formed a new marketing consultant firm, GrownUpMarketing, to help agencies and marketing companies strategically understand the 45+ market and the relevance to their particular brands. Jerry can be reached at jerry@grownupmarketing.com
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