I’m going to keep this short and sweet.

I’m currently in NY attending the Web 2.0 conference, which is basically a geek fest for marketers, developers, and business strategist. Why should you care about what these people with a passion for the web have to say? Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past couple of years you know that web 2.0 is the future of brand communications and if you’re not quick enough to adapt it’s likely you’ll miss the train.

In 1965 34% of evening TV viewers could name a brand advertised during a show just watched.  In 2000 this number dropped to 10%. It’s clear that consumers are no longer listening and we’re told that interruptive marketing has seen its day. We’ve evolved from “telling people what to think” to the rise of the internet where “people are telling us what they think about what we tell them”, but this is only the beginning of the communication shift. Enabled through social media (blogs, media sharing, feeds, online communities, etc), conversations among consumers are ridiculously easy. People are meeting, connecting, organizing, sharing, and collaborating in an unprecedented fashion and consumers are (gasp!) “telling each other what they think.”

Oh and as if this media shift isn’t a challenge enough….in the 1990’s the number of brands on the grocery store shelves tripled from 15,000 to 45,000. This product proliferation and availability means more choice for the buyer and more of a challenge for marketers.  The VP of Nike had it right when he said “we’re not in the business of keeping the media companies alive, we’re in the business of connecting with consumers.”

It’s been a long day and that’s all I got for now, but stay tuned for social media posts around the Web 2.0 conference.