Virtual Reality

This post was created by a colleague of mine from INITIALS. He remembers the days before the internet changed the way we do business…unlike myself! This is a great entry about what he makes of the changes in the media landscape that we are currently living in…

Now that I have apparently been granted a Second Life in cyberspace, encouraged to tweet like a bird and blog the secrets of my life to the universe, I’m just beginning to wonder whether I am living in the real or the virtual world. Is life actually happening around me or is it all just one big fantasy?

 It’s nice to be LinkedIn to all my work colleagues and have so many friends on Facebook but do I really have the time to connect digitally to my virtual world? There are no more hours in the day than there were 30 years ago in BC (before computers) 1979, so it means that I am already living part of my life in this virtual world. Which in turn suggests that part of me is no longer real and that I have become almost a virtual person, existing on a diet of digital fodder being constantly fed to me by persons or forces known or unknown out there in computerland. Perhaps I am being secretly microsoftened up for a fate worse than death, which can only be in the eternal world of virtual reality.

I want my real life back! I want to converse with friends not have to talk to them remotely, because at the moment they haven’t the remotest idea what I’m really thinking when they only communicate with me digitally.

 In a business context too, life has changed beyond (voice?) recognition. As an agency man I can sometimes look back with affectionate nostalgia to those days when we travelled weekly to our clients’ offices to present, live and in real person, our proposals to a group of marketing folk who had time for a few preliminary chatty courtesies before the serious business of advocacy commenced. See the whites of their eyes, watch for the buying signals, gauge the reaction in real(ity) time, then travel back to the office to discuss the meeting and decide on the next action. 

Now, we hardly have time to grab our (Standard Class) seats before the fruits of our labours are being mixed with Blackberries and emailed back to us with instructions on what is required within the next 24 hours. Don’t get me wrong. This new order is exciting, stimulating and moving at the speed of light.

Marcomms Man remembers a different era...

The world of marketing has got pretty confusing though. Here too there is the real world and the digital world. One is regarded as traditional and slow-moving, the other dynamic and multi-platformed. It took radio 38 years to reach an audience of 50 million. It took the Internet 4 years and the iPod just 3 years, so it’s little wonder that even the brightest marketing exponents are still sprinting to catch up with the pace of change.

One thing I’ve learnt though. The ‘traditional’ and the digital marketing world are not mutually exclusive. In fact there’s nothing traditional about TV, radio, press, posters and the like. That’s the real world, inhabited by real people with needs, aspirations and emotions. People who will continue to visit precincts, shop in stores, react and respond to propositions they see, hear, read about and experience.

Increasingly though, they also want to inhabit their virtual world. So it’s up to us to provide them with the signposts that will direct them to those parts of the digital community that will give them fulfilment. By seeing the real and the virtual world as one, and by using the same skills of communication and creativity in both, we have the opportunity to engage them in a way which was unthinkable in the BC years.

I wish I could go on. But as improper as it sounds, I suddenly feel the need to do a tweet and a blog.

Marcomms Man