thinking/critical

Of all the companies that use the Internet for business intelligence, those who have a talent for finding the meaning and patterns behind the noise will benefit the most.

People are getting all wrapped up in social media, thinking social media is the point. Social media is just a delivery device – a delivery device that any junior high school student can master. Marketing is the point, and content is the requirement.

Remember the book – and the saying – the medium is the message? Marshall McLuhan, author of the saying and of the 1964 book of the same name, theorized that every message is not only influenced, but defined, by the medium by which the message is delivered. McLuhan died in 1980, before any of these new digital marketing mediums were possible, let alone conceived of. Yet his work is as relevant today as it was back when he was worried about the ultimate social impact of the television. McLuhan argued that at the intelligent, rational levels of perception, human beings take a message and consider its content carefully. However, at the empirical – experiential – level of consciousness, the medium itself is the message.