The Solution

Signs of the times

By Rick McMullen August 23, 2024 Change Management, Marketing

The current US election cycle is adding more data points to a trend. Legacy media is complaining that they are not getting the access to the candidates that they’re used to. It’s true, they’re not. The Harris campaign is bypassing them and getting directly in front of the electorate by using social media channels, and being very successful in doing so.

Legacy media had a transactional relationship with political candidates. Media got the content to sell their product, and the candidates used the only venue available to them to get their message out. Both parties benefitted. At the recent convention, the Democrats put influencers in a bull pen directly in front of the stage and they were live posting to their followers, generating an instant connection. Legacy media was put in the stadium’s upper tiers, well away from the front line. Why use a translator if you can make an immediate, direct connection?

The market has changed. This campaign highlights exactly how. If legacy media wants to stay in the game, they need to offer something the direct connection can’t. I don’t profess to know what that is, there might not be a viable solution.

One thing to note for any organization is the language being used by the Harris campaign. Keep in mind, these are people who will get access to trillion-dollar economies and nuclear weapons and they’re they’re using real language. It’s not wrapped in ‘policy speak’, they’re saying things in all mediums as if it was a one-on-one conversation. It’s real and it’s consistently authentic. That should be the main take-away.

Running at the speed of change.

By Rick McMullen November 3, 2018 Change Management

60+ years ago, in the 1950’s, the average life expectancy of a company on the New York Stock Exchange was 59 years. Today it’s 19. Up until the invention and installation of the railroad, any information could only travel as fast as a horse and that lasted for centuries. Now we want an immediate response to an email and we wait with bated breath for our latest social media post to get ‘likes’, ‘retweets’, or ‘comments’. Everything has changed, its changed rapidly, and it’s only getting quicker.

We’re in an age where companies like Google state that in five years, 40% of their income needs to be coming from things they haven’t thought of yet. That’s not just managing at the speed of change, that’s staying in front of that curve. That’s also not a luxury for a company focused on innovation, it’s a requirement to stay competitive. However it’s also not the majority of organizations, so it can be expected if you’re thinking, “That’s nice – not applicable to me. At all.”  You’d also be correct. Most of us don’t need to be ahead of the curve, we just need to be aware that there is a curve. This is where most of us fall short. There we are, going about our daily tasks and then woomp. All of a sudden we’re looking at something that’s happened to force us to change. Now we’re in scramble mode and we rush it.

Every so often, we need to climb to the top of the pile of ‘stuff’ around us and take a look at the horizon. What’s coming at you today?