Ten years ago, I was in Las Vegas presenting at the Broadcast Education Association’s annual international conference. My presentation was called “This Changes Everything.” It outlined things that would be changing in our world in the decade to come.
“Prediction is difficult…especially about the future.”
-Yogi Berra
Remembering 2011
2011 was the beginning of the second decade of the 21st century, and already we were witnessing a world where mediated communication was social, global, ubiquitous and cheap. It was the beginning of the social media revolution.
Groupon, which came into existence only a couple of years earlier, grew its revenue to over $1.6 billion in 2011. And yet, the doomsayers were already forecasting its demise. As this chart shows, revenues for Groupon did drop below 2011, but not until 2020.
A contributing factor to this downward revenue trend for Groupon might be that it’s estimated that only about 1% of Groupon users ever became regular customers of the businesses whose coupons they used.
A decade ago, Twitter was the most popular social media platform with more Fortune 100 companies using Twitter than any other social media platform.
As we begin the third decade of the 21st century, we know that the previous decade will now be known most for the impact of Facebook, not Twitter, when it comes to social media dominance.
Media Adoption Rates
In 1920, the adoption rate for commercial AM radio was incredibly fast, only to be eclipsed by the introduction of TV. However, both of these two forms of communication would be dwarfed by the adoption rates of the internet followed by the use of mobile internet made possible by the smartphone.
These last two brought about revolutionary changes in how we communicate.
In fact, the famous Maslow “Hierarchy of Needs” pyramid, might be updated to look like this:
How the World is Connected to the Internet
At the beginning of the second decade of the 21st century, 85% of the world’s population connected to the internet via wireless mobile devices.
To put that into perspective, only 80% of the world was connected to an electrical grid in 2011.
Today, 92.6% or 4.32 billion people connect to the internet wirelessly.
Top Three Gadgets of All Time
A decade ago, The History Channel came out with a list of the “Top Gadgets of All Time” and they were:
- Smartphone
- Radio
- Television
Hat Tip to Mary Meeker
None of these things were a secret, but it was Mary Meeker that tied all of these changes together in her presentation “Internet Trends 2011.” Her presentations are worth your time to view. The most recent one being 2019, before COVID19 disrupted everything. You can view that presentation HERE
What we do know is COVID19 took all of the changes that were slowly taking place and accelerated them dramatically. Think “warp speed.”
The big three takeaways from 2011 were:
- Every media consumer is now a media producer
- Smartphones are changing the world of mediated communications
- Media is now social, global, ubiquitous and cheap
“If you don’t like change, you’re going to like irrelevance even less.”
-General Eric Shinseki, retired Chief of Staff, U.S. Army
What Technology Might a Baby Born Today, Never Use?
Let me throw out some thought starters for you to consider. Please feel free to add to this list.
- Wired home internet
- Dedicated cameras
- Landline telephones
- Slow-booting computers
- Dialup Internet
- Hard Drives
- Electric typewriters
- Movie Theaters
- Computer Mouse
- Remote Controls
- Desktop computers
- Phone numbers
- Prime Time TV
- Fax machines
- Optical disks
- Record player
- Cassette player
- CD Player
- VCR or DVR
- Radio
- ?????
“My passion has been to build an enduring company where people were motivated to make great products. Everything else was secondary. Sure, it was great to make a profit, because that – was what allowed you to make great products – but the products, NOT THE PROFITS, were the motivation.”
-Steve Jobs
So, What’s the Future of Radio?
In 2011, one hundred college students were surveyed about what they believed the future of radio was, here were their top three positive comments and their top three negative comments:
POSITIVE COMMENTS
- Radio will re-invent itself. It is always evolving.
- Radio has a bright future as long as there are cars. It’s the first choice for drivers.
- Satellite Radio will expand as subscriptions become cheaper.
NEGATIVE COMMENTS
- Devices are coming out that will allow iPods and MP3 players to be played in cars.
- Smartphones will gradually take over radio entertainment.
- The only time people listen to radio is in their cars. Even then, they have CDs & MP3s.
Radio’s Car Radio Paranoia
Then Fred Jacobs came out with a blog this week about the seemingly bleak future for AM/FM radio in cars. You can read that HERE
At the annual CES (Consumer Electronic Show) Fred’s been asking about the future of car radio every year, and noticed that more recently auto manufacturers are reluctant to give a direct answer if there might come a day when AM/FM car radios won’t be standard equipment.
For Elon Musk and Tesla, that day is already here.
How to Build Brands
Ernest Dichter is known as the father of motivational research. Over 50 years ago he did a large study on word-of-mouth persuasion that revealed the secrets of how to build brands. Dichter said there are four motivations for a person to communicate about a brand:
- Product-Involvement: the experience had to be so novel and pleasurable that it must be shared with others.
- Self-Involvement: people want to share the knowledge or opinions, as a way to gain attention, have inside information, or assert superiority.
- Other-Involvement: a person wants to reach out and help to express neighborliness, caring or friendship. They are often thought of a “brand evangelists.”
- Message-Involvement: the message is so humorous or informative that it deserves sharing.
“Win the hearts of the people, their minds will follow.”
-Roy H. Williams
So, if you are in the radio business, OR are a radio listener, the question you need to honestly ask yourself is:
In life, more than any other factor, your attitude pretty much determines where you will go… and how far you will go.
The other day, we took two of our grandchildren to a wildlife safari park here in Virginia. It was a simply magical day. But that’s not the part of the story I want to share. It is that both kids were wearing their Boston Red Sox baseball caps.
Jerry Lee recently sold his only radio station, WBEB in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was 55-years ago this past May that Jerry and his partner David Kurtz put the station on the air. It signed on as WDVR. In the 1980s the call letters were changed to WEAZ and the station was branded as “EZ 101.” The station brand was not only well known, but fixed tuned FM radios were given out by the radio station to area businesses to play the station in their stores and offices.
Most recently, Jerry rebranded his station as “101.1 MoreFM.” This change, like all the others, was promoted in every imaginable way and became familiar to listeners virtually overnight.
Once upon a time, all radio listening was recorded using a diary, kept by a listener for seven days. Years of diary reviews at the Arbitron headquarters in Maryland proved to me that the radio stations most familiar to their listeners got the most “votes” from their fans.
People in the survey said traditional AM/FM radio was the thing most replaced by audio listening via their smart speaker.
“Brands now have a chance to behave like human beings, talking, understanding, guiding, empathizing…voice is the single biggest vector of emotion, emotion is the biggest driver of preference. This is a true 1:1 marketing opportunity and a chance to build relationships like never before.” -Mark Paul Taylor, Chief Experience Officer, Global DCX Practice, Capgemini
Everything old is new again. I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase. “Everything old is new again” was the title of a song in the movie musical “All That Jazz.” Part of the lyrics to this Peter Allen/Carole Bayer Sager song include:
Radio has been here many times in it’s almost 100-year history before.
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