Imagine for a moment that Zinedine Zidane's infamous, immortalized headbutt of Marco Materazzi in the World Cup Final took place not in 2006, but in a prior World Cup. Let's travel back in time and capture the hypothetical media frenzy surrounding the brutal moment:
1990 - Before the Web - The headbutt receives seemingly endless coverage in newspapers, on television and in magazines for a week or two. You read about it, watch the replays over and over, and talk about it with your friends and coworkers. You get a hilarious idea about editing the video using state-of-the-art special effects and making the result into a commercial, but it's impossible to act on that idea without spending a fortune.
1998 - Web 1.0 - Zidane's "bonehead" move receives seemingly endless coverage in newspapers, on television and in magazines for a week or two. You've got Internet access at home, so you get online and look for others who are as intrigued by the event as you are. You're abe to download a short video of the headbutt, but there are no online communities that make it easy for you to participate in any collective experience involving video. The best you can do is participate in Internet chat rooms and online forums. Your slow Web connection takes a lot of the fun out of talking to others about the craziest headbutt ever. You could make a website about the incident, but it would be very difficult to drive thousands of visitors to it quickly because there are few places online (or even offline) that could quickly index and publicize your site at little or no cost.
2006 - Back to reality. Zidane's "bonehead" move receives seemingly endless coverage in newspapers, on television and in magazines for a week or two. You might peruse newspaper or magazine articles about The Headbutt or watch reruns of it on TV, but your crown source of Headbutt Mania is now the Web. You're finally able to easily upload, watch, comment on, and share videos of the headbutt. Flickr lets you post photos capturing your reaction to the incident. YouTube offers hilarious riff after remix after remake of the "smash hit." You get the crazy idea of depicting Zidane saving Materazzi from a sniper kitten. Thanks to computer software and the Web, you get your wish and hundreds of thousands of people watch your work within days. You start a blog about it and thousands of people visit, with dozens leaving congratulatory comments. You've finally gotten your wish to participate in a communal experience involving the media you've consumed and created. What used to be impossible now is easy.
The moral of today's story is simply this: Pop culture changes changes quickly. The way we consume and create media changes quickly. So don't insist on an unchanging business strategy. As the Web evolves more and more rapidly, your business will likely need to change constantly in response.
How are you responding to Zidane headbutts that your business could capitalize on right now?
1990 - Before the Web - The headbutt receives seemingly endless coverage in newspapers, on television and in magazines for a week or two. You read about it, watch the replays over and over, and talk about it with your friends and coworkers. You get a hilarious idea about editing the video using state-of-the-art special effects and making the result into a commercial, but it's impossible to act on that idea without spending a fortune.
1998 - Web 1.0 - Zidane's "bonehead" move receives seemingly endless coverage in newspapers, on television and in magazines for a week or two. You've got Internet access at home, so you get online and look for others who are as intrigued by the event as you are. You're abe to download a short video of the headbutt, but there are no online communities that make it easy for you to participate in any collective experience involving video. The best you can do is participate in Internet chat rooms and online forums. Your slow Web connection takes a lot of the fun out of talking to others about the craziest headbutt ever. You could make a website about the incident, but it would be very difficult to drive thousands of visitors to it quickly because there are few places online (or even offline) that could quickly index and publicize your site at little or no cost.
2006 - Back to reality. Zidane's "bonehead" move receives seemingly endless coverage in newspapers, on television and in magazines for a week or two. You might peruse newspaper or magazine articles about The Headbutt or watch reruns of it on TV, but your crown source of Headbutt Mania is now the Web. You're finally able to easily upload, watch, comment on, and share videos of the headbutt. Flickr lets you post photos capturing your reaction to the incident. YouTube offers hilarious riff after remix after remake of the "smash hit." You get the crazy idea of depicting Zidane saving Materazzi from a sniper kitten. Thanks to computer software and the Web, you get your wish and hundreds of thousands of people watch your work within days. You start a blog about it and thousands of people visit, with dozens leaving congratulatory comments. You've finally gotten your wish to participate in a communal experience involving the media you've consumed and created. What used to be impossible now is easy.
The moral of today's story is simply this: Pop culture changes changes quickly. The way we consume and create media changes quickly. So don't insist on an unchanging business strategy. As the Web evolves more and more rapidly, your business will likely need to change constantly in response.
How are you responding to Zidane headbutts that your business could capitalize on right now?
Posted by: Hal Halladay | July 15, 2006 6:45 PM | Permalink to Comment