Z.E.R.O.: Zero Paid Media as the New Marketing Model

CHAPTER3

The Economic Case

The world economy has not only become borderless but also relentless, restless, and impatient. Add to this the volatile state of economies around the world, and you will understand that these factors are greatly contributing to the perfect storm that allows our Z.E.R.O. concept to become so relevant today.

Bob Johansen, distinguished fellow of the Institute for the Future, calls the world today a VUCA world. VUCA stands for volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity.¹

I find this an amazingly simple and at the same time appropriate acronym. The four VUCA ingredients perfectly describe the world we live in, and whether you look at economic, business, media, or geopolitical world affairs, they all seem to be driven by VUCA.

In business, the combination of VUCA and access to global, real-time data means that Wall Street or any other investor hotbed—London, Hong Kong, Frankfurt, and so on—has completely lost sight of Warren Buffett's investment rule #9: “Buy and hold . . . for a long time.” Instead, the prices of gold, oil, and coffee seem to go up and down on the whim of world events and quarterly business performance of companies and brands.

On December 6, 2012, research firm IDC announced that Android seemed to be winning the operating system battle in the mobile world, and Apple lost 6 percent of its value in a day, losing an accumulated shareholder value of $35 billion. Did anything materially change in the way Apple was making money between ...