SOME PREDICTIONS ABOUT THE P.R. BUSINESS FOR 2009

MediaBistro.com is an important and widely read source of news for the media community.  It is very robust in its scope of coverage, and provides a constant diet of news, features, information of interest to people in the business, and interactive conversation.  They link to a number of blogs they have created for several niches of the industry.  One of those blogs is called PRNewser.  It has become the custom at the end of one year for PRNewser to solicit predictions about what might happen to the public relations business in the year ahead.  They like these predictions to be concise and pithy.  Anyone who has read a previous post here on Death of Time knows that I am rarely concise, but nevertheless, here is my attempt to create a series of concise and pithy predictions about the PR business for 2009, with one caveat:  What I am predicting tend to be events occurring within the process of an evolutionary process, so whereas I am willing to bet these will occur (with some shades of difference), they may not begin and/or end precisely within the confines of the next twelve months.  

1.  The model for the PR business will change because nobody cares how busy PR people are - they only care about the value of their work.

Time is money only when you live by the standards of the manufacturing economy.  But we are transitioning ever quicker to a knowledge economy, and public relations is far from a manufacturing business with lots of fixed hard assets.  So why is the PR business still based on the outdated concept of billing by time?  The process of creative destruction associated with the financial crisis will accelerate the destruction of the old model, as The Washington Post’s Pulitzer prize winning business columnist Steve Pearlstein predicted in October 2006, when he discussed the Qorvis model.  In 2009, we’ll start seeing more firms set fees on the basis of a fixed retainer based on the value of the effort rather than the time it may take to make it happen.

•2.     Segmentation within PR firms will begin to crumble.

In a world where the desired audience for a message can be highly targeted and can be reached through many distribution channels, why are there silos and “practice groups” inside PR firms?  Isn’t the idea to share experiences, approaches, and contacts to maximize all the firm’s human assets for the benefit of the client?  Silos are non-productive.  The only reason they exist is because time sheets allow Management to measure everything into little segments of time, so that’s what drives management actions.  And time also determines how people get paid and how bonuses are awarded.  And who is deemed “profitable.”  And how to tell which clients are most cherished.  Crazy.  Chunks of time have nothing to do with what the clients want.  They want great work.  They are no longer going to be making their budget decisions by how many chunks of time it takes to do something; they are going to be determining the value of every dollar they spend against results delivered.  Delivery on that expectation will be directly related to the degree of collegiality among talented people seeking shared goals.  The silos have to go.  It’s only a matter of time.

•3.     The communications business will stop defining itself by virtue of a distribution channel.

Think about it.  An ad agency is an “ad agency” because it buys time or space on a distribution channel to deliver its message to its targets.  And a PR firm is a “PR firm” because it “earns” coverage in a distribution channel controlled by others.  A digital shop focuses on digital distribution channels.  Sports marketing uses another distribution channel: perhaps a stadium.  But wait.  Is “communications” about the distribution channel or about getting a well-crafted message to a targeted audience to achieve specific goals?  So, why has the industry defined itself by the distribution channel instead of the goal of the effort?  It’s about time to change the way the industry has organized itself.  We’re going to see the end of PR firms, ad agencies, new media shops, etc.  We’re going to see communications firms, where distribution channels are simply tools to get messages to audiences, and not the center of gravity of the effort.

•4.     Social media loses the hype.

Wait!  That’s crazy.  Social media is THE thing.  It’s going to revolutionize communications.  Yup.  Except for one thing:  it isn’t going to revolutionize communications 100%.  It’s important.  It’s going to hurt other ways of communicating.  It is NOT going to kill all other ways of getting messages to people.  It has been over-hyped.  If social media is going to become as important as it can be, it will be because it is a part (a very important part) of a total and robust communications campaign.  To get there, all the proselytizers of social media have to take a breath, get a grip, get real, and bring down the hype.

•5.     At least one of the multinational communications conglomerates bites the dust.

Impossible?  Sure, just ask everyone from Lehman and Bear Stearns (should I mention the rest?) who also never believed that they would go bye-bye virtually overnight.  Look at the big conglomerates.  Massive and duplicative overhead structures.  Silos within silos.  Outdated business models.  Offices in parts of the world where the clients have gone into comas.  Offices dedicated to verticals that are on their back.  Large amounts of debt from their acquisition binge.  The ongoing need to make earn-out payments - and just how are they going to do that?  With stock that is so low that the dilution will be enormous, or with money that (if they have it) they have to preserve? 

•6.     The bifurcation of the communications industry into “consumerism” and “supporterism.”

Since the post WW II expansion, the messages that have inundated the American public have been “buy this” messages.  Whether targeting a business or an individual, the message has virtually always been to buy something.  A small sliver of the total universe of messages has been of the “support this” variety - that is, messages that ask people to do something else: to vote or influence or urge or make a call or go to a rally or do a wide range of other things for the sake of keeping or changing public policy.  That is about to change.  The economy is going to lead to severe cuts in consumer campaigns, and the frequency of those messages is going to drop sharply.  At the same time, the Obama Administration is giving every signal that it is going to address fundamental, game-changing issues in a large number of businesses and arenas of daily life.  Every special interest group in the nation is going to have a mission critical need to defend the status quo or promulgate and promote new proposals.  That will lead to a surge in “support this” campaigns.  Those communications firms with a portfolio of “buy this” campaigns are going to face difficult times as they experience budget cuts from their existing clients and difficulty competing against firms that have a strong portfolio of “support this” campaigns.  What should we expect?  A lot of communications shops are going to try to retool, redefine and reposition their expertise to go after “supporterism” campaigns.  We’ll start to see seminars and college courses and papers all about “how to run a campaign to get people to support a public issue.”  Asserting expertise in running advocacy campaigns will become very hot.

•7.     That will be good news for Washington; bad news elsewhere.

I realize that my own company, Qorvis, fits this description, so I keep poking myself and saying: “Make sure this isn’t wishful thinking.”  But I’ve also spent four decades in this market, and have become a part of it.  Here’s what I see:  During the tech boom, if you ran a software company, it didn’t matter whether you were in San Jose, St. Louis, or Scotland, you were inclined to go to Silicon Valley to at least interview for your VC, lawyer, communications firm, etc.  As the surge in “support this” campaigns occurs, prospective clients will gravitate to Washington communications firms, lobbyists, lawyers, and their industry trade associations, all of which comprise an existing and interlocked community.  Top talent from New York and other traditional centers of the communications industry will relocate to Washington and become part of the culture of advocacy.

•8.     The death of the PR lifestyle business.  The rise of the PR lifestyle consultant.

A public relations business can grow large enough to go public and expand to a global presence.  But that size isn’t necessary to succeed.  In fact, the PR business can be a great business for individuals who pull together to form a small group of professionals and simply want to make a very good living, control their own destiny, and enjoy their work.  I consider those to be “lifestyle” businesses.  I understand the attractiveness - I operated as the ultimate lifestyle business (a one-person shop) for almost seven years.  But very often, these firms do not have significant financial depth; nor do they have a very diversified client base.  In other words, they are always vulnerable to getting hurt by a relatively few number of bad events.  And those bad events are coming, part and parcel of the economic meltdown.  The PR firms are going to have to do one thing to survive: cut back.  And after they cut back, they will likely have to cut back more.  There are only so many expenses they can cut back: people and office, and they will cut back both.  What will be left will be the initial entrepreneur working out of their home.  In addition, those who were cut from lifestyle firms as well as larger firms, corporate organizations, and non-profits will also move to their homes and set-up shop as one-person consultancies.  Many will achieve substantial success.  I think their success will be attributable to the degree of expertise they provide and their ability to find a large universe of potential clients via the web.  I also think those who try to compete on the basis of being the low cost provider don’t have a prayer.

Whether right or wrong, there is an interesting year ahead of us.  It will be easy to count blessings.  Best to all.

THOUGHTS ON THE RISE OF “SUPPORTERISM” AND ITS IMPACT ON WASHINGTON – THE VIDEO

At the December 2, 2008, “New Washington” conference held at The National Press Club , I gave a brief presentation on how I believe the convergence of the economic downturn and the new political environment will give rise to a decline in “buy this” messages and a surge in “support this” messages.  This is a video of that presentation.  For videos of each of the other speakers, including David Rubenstein of Carlyle, Gov. Tom Ridge, and Joe Robert (real estate investor), plus Steven Fuller’s presentation of his most recent projections for the region,

click here.

THE EMERGING SHIFT IN THE FOCUS OF MESSAGES AIMED AT THE AMERICAN PUBLIC

& WHAT THAT WILL MEAN TO WASHINGTON (AND NEW YORK)

 The following are my remarks prepared (and slightly edited) for the conference on “The New Washington” held at The National Press Club in Washington, D.C., the morning of December 2, 2008.  Qorvis Communications was a sponsor of that conference and helped initiate it.  The conference, for which almost 600 people reserved seats, was hosted by Bisnow,  and other sponsors included Patton Boggs and Deloitte.

In the first quarter of this year, Chrysler and Ford cut U.S. advertising budgets by 42 percent and 31 percent, respectively.  In April and May, Proctor & Gamble, the largest advertiser in the world, cut its ad spend by twenty percent.  In the second quarter, Netflix, one of the largest advertisers on the Internet, cut its marketing expenses by 27 percent.  All of that was before the financial meltdown of October – before the consumer went comatose.

It is simply restating the obvious to say that the economy is bringing with it a dramatic decrease in messages that basically say “buy this.”

At the same time, the changing political environment is leading to an accelerating increase in messages that say: “support this.”  We have already begun to see these messages and it’s only spring training — the real season hasn’t even begun.  Support the importance of chemistry.  Support this way of  conducting union elections.  Support reforming the nation’s healthcare system this way and certainly not that way.   These are part of the tip of an iceberg.  We’re going to live in an environment of a permanent political campaign that does not end with an election but goes up and down in intensity as issues move onto the front stage, get resolved or deferred, and new ones come up to take their place.

The reason for the current and emerging growth in “support this” messages is obvious:  The new White House and executive branch, led by an enormously charismatic President with dramatic persuasive abilities to articulate the messages for his own agenda, is giving every indication that he will be unafraid to address very fundamental issues.  He will be supported by a new Congress that will take office feeling a mandate for change from a highly engaged and interactive constituency.

Together, the new White House and new Congress will propose game-changing rules for a broad range of industries including healthcare, energy, defense, the nation’s transportation infrastructure, financial services … the list goes on.  As a result, special interest groups of all sizes, ideologies and motivations will have mission critical needs to defend those existing policies – and/or promote those new policies – that serve their vested interests.

There are some important inherent differences between campaigns to get an audience to buy something versus campaigns to get an audience to support something.  The very metrics for success are different:  seeking votes in the Senate for proposed legislation is a vastly different process than seeking to get a consumer to buy an SUV.  For example, asking someone to make a phone call or send an email to a Senator is a major goal of campaigns for supporters, but inane in campaigns for consumers.

Supporter-driven campaigns are combinations of public affairs, grass roots, crisis communications, media relations, guerilla marketing, political strategy, special events, interactive and social media, and traditional advertising, all working in tandem with lobbying and legal efforts.  This is the type of expertise that has grown up in DC, and that has become a separate and distinct communications industry segment.

What does this mean to the future of Greater Washington?

• The communications industry is dividing in two.  The center of consumerism will remain in New York, LA, and certain other markets such as Detroit for the automobile industry; but the center of what I call “supporterism” will be here in Washington.

• This should benefit our region.  The consumer-oriented segment of the communications industry started getting hit even before the October financial crisis and has already begun to cut expenses and people.  But the supporter-oriented segment of the industry – that part of the industry that exists in Washington – has been growing.  And it is likely to continue to grow substantially as campaign promises transition to possible new realities … and when what is at-risk – or what can be gained – becomes perhaps all-too-clear to all parties.

Or, to paraphrase Willy Sutton, who robbed banks because that was where the money was, taking messages to Washington will grow because that is where the money is now — as well as the power to enact new game-changing rules.

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FOCUS WASHINGTON INTERVIEW

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THE MESSAGE IS THE MEDIUM:

PREPARE FOR A NEW ERA OF COMMUNICATIONS CAMPAIGNS

The following article is long by current blog standards.  I try to tie together a few thoughts that are of concern to anyone with an interest in how policy changes may impact their industry, interests or personal lives.  I try to make a case that the current global economic and political environment will lead to a fight for message control and how issues are defined.  This activity, combined with a dramatic change in the capabilities of (and access to) a new communications infrastructure, requires a new way of thinking about communications campaigns.

CONSIDER JUST HOW FUNDAMENTALLY THE WORLD IS CHANGING:

A new global financial environment that is highly volatile and still too risky to predict.  A new White House, all new cabinet, and new Congress about to be swept into office by a highly energized and engaged electorate, including four million new voters.  A populist mandate, not necessarily for any specific action, but for long-lasting, fundamental and as yet undefined change itself.  A new regulatory environment with new laws, new regulations and new standards about to become new realities.  A new role for governments as bankers and investors in a truly global economy.  Constant communications.  Constant news.  Constant action and reaction.  Never-ending political campaigns - not appeals for votes but for support for (or opposition to) proposed changes.

NOW CONSIDER THE FIGHT THAT IS ABOUT TO EMERGE
AS THE POLITICAL MOOD AND GLOBAL EVENTS GIVE WAY TO THE NEXT STAGE:
SPECIFIC PROPOSALS FOR CHANGE.

The nation’s anxieties are so intense that serious consideration is being given to holding a lame duck session of Congress even before the Inauguration and the new Congress convenes in January.  The economy, the war in Iraq, the global war on terrorism, education and healthcare will be at the top of Congress’ agenda, but the agenda will not end there.  And, even if there is a lame duck session, the momentum for action will be far from vented by the time of the Inauguration.  By then the flurry of proposals for change that exists now will become a tsunami of proposals, not limited to any particular issue.

Although partisanship-as-usual was ultimately overwhelmed to the degree necessary to address the debt crisis and enact a “bailout” bill, it happened neither quickly nor well and it took a panic to force it.  It would be naïve to believe that a new era of bipartisanship has been born.  As theories start being translated into action, both honest ideological differences and parochial political interests will become much more in evidence.

A debate will emerge over each aspect of each call for change.  The intensity of the debate will be unprecedented because of what will be at risk:  fundamental rules of the game in matters as wide ranging as how the global financial markets are structured, how industries are regulated, who pays how much for healthcare, and how entitlement programs continue to be funded.  In this environment, every enterprise in the nation, along with many throughout the world, will have vested interests they will want (need) to protect and promote.

This will not be a quiet process.  Enterprises from the left and right, for profit and not-for-profit, public and private, local, regional, national and international will focus on the issues that concern them.  They will come to an understanding of what the potential impact may be, and they will come to the brutal realization that they have a mission critical need to communicate to their members, customers, investors, vendors and the public at large to build support as powerful as possible for their agenda.  They will want to take control of the critical messages that define their issues.  They will need to develop ways to mobilize their supporters.  They will fight to expand their base.

And it will all happen in a new era of digital communications.  In real time. Largely uncontrolled.  A platform for every message.  Non-stop.  Global.

THE NOISE LEVEL WILL GROW AND THE VERY NATURE OF THE NOISE WILL CHANGE. 

Although global banking action may have put the brakes to what looked like an inevitable crash of the debt and equity markets, it seems clear that a worldwide recession is emerging and that it will be significant both in terms of length and depth.  The strong economy we enjoyed for so long was largely fueled (and enjoyed) by consumers – and consumers will be hit very hard as the crisis in the capital markets moves to “the real economy.”  Billions of dollars of equity the consumer had in their homes has evaporated, and with it so has the buying power they had when they were able to tap that equity to buy another flat screen TV, fund a vacation, or send a kid to college.  They now find themselves with debt obligations higher than they thought they’d face just at the same time as crucial expenses such as gas and food have increased in price.  Without the ability to draw on their home equity or credit cards, they have less ability to meet their expenses.  This is about to be exacerbated as headlines about esoteric debt instruments convert into headlines about layoffs and higher unemployment.

The consumer market won’t die, but it is likely to be in a coma of some degree for a substantial period of time.  What will that mean for all those advertising dollars that have traditionally been spent to get at the consumer’s wallet?  Why would that money be spent now when the wallet is depleted or the consumer is not ready to open it out of fear from uncertainty?

So here is a certainty: advertising budgets of those who market to the consumer will be slashed.  This doesn’t mean advertising will stop, but much higher efficiency will be sought.  We will see traditional appeals for the wallet move to the web and other new media, where buying decisions can be made quickly, impulsively and at lower overhead to the seller.

This will leave TV and radio stations with major inventories of unsold time and it will leave newspapers and other print media with unsold space.  The print media will reduce their unsold inventory of space by reducing the number of pages they print and we will continue to see print media shrink in size (and continue to devolve as a business).  But TV and radio stations cannot expand or contract time.  They’ve got it for sale and they’ll keep dropping the price until it becomes so compelling that buyers will step forward.  And that will lead to a change in the “noise” that hits people in their everyday life:  the lower priced advertising will attract those who have the critical vested interest to appeal to hearts and brains for support, supplanting those who have historically appealed to wallets for sales.

Imagine a pie chart of advertising messages that reach people.  The chart has two slices: one represents advertisers going for their target’s wallet and brand loyalty for their product or service, and the other represents those going for the target’s emotional and intellectual buy-in for their support in one form or another.  Although the latter has grown in size over the past few years, for decades the former has been the bigger slice of that pie by far.  We have lived in - and been shaped by - an environment that has been inundated with messages that in most basic terms have said: “Buy Me.”  That is about to change to an inundation of messages that say: “Support This Position.”

Just as the constant barrage of “Buy Me” messages created a consumer-driven culture, the “Support Me” messages will also create a culture.  That new culture, which will emerge and evolve over time, will be different than the culture that grew with the Post World War II period of expansion and the Baby Boom.  It is probably too soon in the process to predict exactly what that culture might look like as it becomes real.

However, it’s not too early to come to a conclusion about what’s at risk.  Just look at how the global capital system has changed in the past few weeks: a change in ownership and control of the world’s most important financial institutions, a substantial negative change in the value of virtually every publicly traded enterprise in the world, and a change in the geographic centers of power in our nation’s financial industry, with the equity market still in New York, but the center of gravity for the debt market now in Washington.  Those are pretty momentous and game changing events.  But the list of such significant change has already grown longer since the debt crisis, and it would be a mistake to think it won’t grow even longer.

And in every instance of proposed change - each carrying its own dramatic, fundamental and debatable set of possible consequences - proponents and opponents will arise and vie to control the message and frame the debate.

A chorus of diverse voices will emerge, each arguing for their point of view:  employers and unions; those who want to focus on the critical issues associated with whether and how we exploit resources and conserve our environment; those with more “family room” issues such as whether money goes to fund school lunch programs or school music programs; and those who just want to use a time of turbulence as an opportunity to advance their own political or social agendas.

As more enterprises realize the risks inherent in how proposed changes could touch them, they will join the public debate.  Then, as the time for debate ends and the time for voting or adoption of administrative action nears, they will raise the volume of their messages even more.  This will create a cacophony of messages that will become increasingly louder - and more difficult to break through.  And to achieve that will require a radically different view of how to think about communications campaigns.

“ADVERTISING” WILL BECOME OBSOLETE.
SO WILL “P.R.”

The communications industry and communications campaigns have distinct sub-segments that are often defined by virtue of the distribution channel used to communicate a message.  For example, ”advertising” is defined by virtue of the fact that the message is communicated using distribution channels that are bought.  “P.R.” refers to using ”free” space or time that is “earned” on a distribution channel.  “Interactive” refers to using a digital distribution channel.  Because distribution channels have defined the communications industry, they have also defined the borders and scopes of communications campaigns.  As a consequence, communications efforts are too often approached with thinking that is neither robust nor bold enough.  It would be a serious mistake to continue that type of thinking under any circumstances.  In the current and emerging environment, the mistake could be fatal.

After all, what advertising has in common with P.R. or social media or event marketing or any other communications specialty is one thing: the effort is undertaken to get specific messages to specific audiences to achieve specific results.  So why define a communications effort by virtue of the distribution channel?  Why not define the communications effort by virtue of its goal rather than its process?

Enterprises that reject a distribution-centric definition of communications in favor of a goal-driven approach are achieving a new level of effectiveness and efficiency through truly integrated campaigns.  The successes of these campaigns will be emulated.  Over time, the silos of communications “practice groups” will fall.  Eventually, neither the communications industry itself nor communications efforts will be defined by virtue of a distribution channel.  The message will become paramount.

THE MEDIUM IS THE MESSAGE.

I was graduated from George Washington University in 1967.  I majored in philosophy.  I thought then (and still believe now) that I and my friends were studying philosophy at the same time that a major new idea was emerging.  I confess that I cannot summarize it better than this Wikipedia entry (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_medium_is_the_message):

“The medium is the message” is a phrase coined by Marshall McLuhan meaning that the form of a medium embeds itself in the message, creating a symbiotic relationship by which the medium influences how the message is perceived, creating subtle change over time. The phrase was introduced in his most widely known book, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, published in 1964.^[1] McLuhan proposes that media themselves, not the content they carry, should be the focus of study; he said that a medium affects the society in which it plays a role not only by the content delivered over the medium, but by the characteristics of the medium itself.

McLuhan made a legitimate point that is still relevant.  But today, there is a collateral statement that may be even more important:

THE MESSAGE IS THE MEDIUM.

When engaged in truly integrated communications campaigns (as opposed to “an ad campaign” or “an interactive campaign,” etc.) the message is launched to targeted audiences through any distribution channel that makes sense for the effort, limited neither by geography, deadline, nor language.  The message reaches its desired audiences when they watch TV, when they work at their desks, and wherever they go, with unprecedented power, specificity and immediacy.  For example, iPhone and its forthcoming clones will deliver messages with compelling impact tailored to the individual’s interests at the spot they are standing at the moment they are standing there.  The fully executed integrated campaign results in messages becoming virtually ubiquitous with their intended audience, based on the person’s individual’s interests and their prospects for taking an action such as supporting a bill or buying a product.

McLuhan was right in that the medium can deliver a message with an impact that influences or even becomes more potent than the message itself.  But, today (and increasingly so in the future) messages can be so relevant to the target’s interests, so constant, so powerfully presented, and coming at them in so many ways that the specific distribution channels employed to take the message to the target will become irrelevant and largely unidentifiable.  In that case, the message becomes ubiquitous and more powerful than ever because, for all practical purposes, the message itself becomes the medium.

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THE DEATH OF THE INTERNET

Yesterday I began to use my new kindle, which is an entirely new device available from Amazon.  If you haven’t seen it in person, you can find out more on the web at www.amazon.com/kindle   Imagine a device that looks sort of like a frame that is about 8″ high and less than 6″ wide, maybe half an inch thick and weighs a few ounces.  Now imagine that the glass part of the frame only takes up the top two-thirds, with the bottom third devoted to an easy-to-use keyboard and a few special keys.  Under the “glass” is a new type of “page” using a new type of “ink.”  You can see the contents easily in any light, indoors or out, and if you are reading type, you can increase the font and put away your reading glasses.  What you see is what you access wirelessly and virtually instantaneously from Amazon, including books at less than $10.00, subscriptions to newspapers and other news sources from several nations, blogs, and a lot more that I haven’t discovered yet.  One nice thing is that you can (as I am doing currently) read a book or two (or more) and some newspapers, put them “down” whenever you feel like it, and when you come back to it, you come back to exactly where you left off.

The kindle is far from perfect.  As is iPhone.  As are lots of other devices and services that are being introduced to the market.  Whether these new innovations are perfect or not is irrelevant.  Taken together, they are indicative of a trend that I believe can be defined as the Death of the Internet.

To explain what I mean by the Death of the Internet, I want to reflect on two other comparable deaths: the death of the caller ID box and the death of transistors. Remember when caller ID first emerged?  What a great device!  For the first time, you knew who was calling before you picked up the phone.  The benefits are obvious.  But caller ID was not without controversy.  In fact, California at first banned caller ID technology from being used in the state, and was the last state to allow it — in about 1993 or so if I remember correctly.  Caller ID was first offered as a “peripheral” — that is, a box that you attached to your phone.  But fairly soon after its introduction as a stand-alone device, responding to rapid and broad acceptance by the marketplace, manufacturers of telephone units began to integrate the caller ID box into the phone itself.  Today, all phones, wired or wireless, for the home or office, incorporate caller ID.  It became ubiquitous, and when it became ubiquitous it was no longer “there” as something unique or even identifiable.  The peripheral itself died as it became part of the thing into which it was integrated.

I remember the year 1955, because of a few reasons.  My family moved from New York to the Greater Washington area (Alexandria, VA).  And the Brooklyn Dodgers beat the New York Yankees in the World Series.  And there was also my first transistor radio.  It was not “a portable radio.”  It was not even always “a transistor radio.”  Often it was simply “the transistor.”  It was remarkable.  Radios shrunk from those pieces of furniture you gathered around to listen to Dragnet to something you could hold up to your ear with one hand and carry with you everywhere.  No plug; one special battery.

Transistor radios, we all knew, were made possible by transistors themselves.  The hype about transistors, and what they could do, and how they would change our lives was at least as great as the hype that exists for the Internet now.  Transistors would be everywhere.  They would be part of everything.  They would change the way we live.  The predictions actually came true!  Transistors ARE everywhere today, from your wrist, where they are used to keep time, to the device on which you are reading this, to your car, your kitchen.  It is hard to think of a device where transistors are not integral components.  They are ubiquitous.  They are no longer peripheral to anything; they are a vital part of our lives and the way we live.  So vital and so integrated into our lives that we no longer think of them.  Transistors have basically “died.”

Just as transistors have died from ubiquity, so too will the network that today makes possible my new kindle and the iPhone, Blackberry, cell phone, text messaging, GPS devices, streaming video, Internet Radio.  This network operates through wires and wirelessly, within a house and throughout the world.  I no longer go to a special place, such as my desk, to access this network.  Remember the phrase “I’m going to log on”?  When did that phrase emerge?  Ever hear it anymore?  We no longer need to use the phrase because we no longer need to “log on.”  We are connected all the time.  And as these devices — plus devices we aren’t even aware of yet — do move beyond their initial flaws and get closer to perfection, they will be integrated into our lives even more.  Our connection to a network we currently refer to as the Internet will no longer be peripheral to us.  It will be part of us.  Wherever we are.  In one form or another, obvious and totally hidden.

As this is happening with accelerating speed, the Internet is dying as certainly as caller ID boxes died and as transistors died.  I think this will have enormous implications on the way we communicate and the communications industry.  I expect to write about that some more in the future.  But in the meantime, if you want a hint of how the communications industry is going to change, take a look at what The Washington Post is doing with the iPhone — I am very excited about the fact that Qorvis has been part of that effort.  This is a prelude to a new era in communications.  Here is the release that announced the first in a series of applications for the iPhone:

July 23, 2008 10:20 AM Eastern Daylight Time  

washingtonpost.com Launches First iPhone Native Application

City Guide App Provides On-the-Go Info for D.C.-Area Hot Spots

GPS-Enabled Search Plus Reviews on Restaurants, Bars & Clubs

WASHINGTON–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Today washingtonpost.com launches the site’s first downloadable application for the iPhone and iPod touch, providing an on-the-go, personal entertainment guide for over 2,000 Washington, D.C.-area restaurants, bars and clubs.The City Guide app uses a GPS feature to find and map all nearby locations within blocks of where a user is standing. With an easy-to-navigate design, the application lets users search by name, neighborhood and cuisine. Users can quickly look up an address, phone number, hours, price range, directions and more.Popular Washington Post food critic Tom Sietsema’s restaurant reviews and top picks from washingtonpost.com’s Going Out Gurus guide users to the city’s best destinations. Users can make a list of their personal favorites to reference regularly or create a list of hot spots they want to try.We are continuing to explore opportunities to translate features on washingtonpost.com for mobile audiences and the City Guide application was a natural fit,” said Jim Brady, Executive Editor of washingtonpost.com. With this application, we are giving mobile users all of the information they need to conveniently navigate the entertainment scene in and around D.C.The City Guide iPhone application is available for free from Apple’s App Store on iPhone and iPod touch under the Lifestyle category. Users can download City Guide using the following link: http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/ viewSoftware?id=285887422&mt=8 (Due to its length, this URL may need to be copied/pasted into your Internet browser’s address field. Remove the extra space if one exists.)The new iPhone City Guide app is an expansion of washingtonpost.com’s mobile entertainment offerings. Anyone with a Web-enabled mobile phone can look up information on D.C. area restaurants, bars and clubs or movie show times by visiting: http://twp.com/cityguide. Users without that capability can text a search term plus a location to WPOST (97678). For more information on City Guide mobile offerings visit: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/cityguide/mobile/.  washingtonpost.com worked with Qorvis Communications to develop and design the City Guide iPhone application.

About washingtonpost.com: washingtonpost.com is an award-winning news and information destination that delivers world-class reporting and innovative multimedia content, creating a truly interactive news experience. Using the latest technology and tools, washingtonpost.com encourages participation and content customization across all platforms, allowing readers to engage with washingtonpost.com anytime, anywhere. Winner of four consecutive Edward R. Murrow Awards for Overall Excellence for Non-Broadcast Affiliated Web site, washingtonpost.com is owned by Washington Post.Newsweek Interactive, the online publishing subsidiary of The Washington Post Company. (NYSE:WPO)

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