Media Rules!: Mastering Today's Technology to Connect With and Keep Your Audience

Chapter 1. The Media That Matters

The basic premise of this book is that media rules!

What exactly does that mean? Well, for starters, we believe that media is the information, the experiences, and all the stuff that we consume and share every day. In this sense, media is not one format more than any other. It's not the technology that delivers these things. It is the content. Media is virtually anything that we create, consume, and share in our daily lives. It might be something that you wear; it might be something that you hear; it might be something you create on a computer, or just scribble on the back of a napkin; it might be something that your audience creates on their cell phone or with a can of spray paint on the wall of a building. All these things and more are media. It's content. It's the stuff people experience. It's not a technology. It's the substance, not how it is delivered or received. And when you look at the way media is now being pushed into and embraced by the mainstream and influencing how people spend their time, money and energy, it is evidence that media rules!

Organizations, in how they operate and communicate, are confused and in some cases struggling in the wake of massive technological advancements and societal change. But there is a path to success. If organizations adopt and communicate a mediacentric strategy, they will not only survive but thrive. If they look for new ways of operating, new models to better serve their audience and live up to the ...