The Chaos Scenario: Amid the Ruins of Mass Media, the Choice for Business Is Stark: Listen or Perish. Bob Garfield. Nashville, TN: Stielstra Publishing, 2009. 306 pp.
One of the popular debates about the Internet and related digital technologies is whether they represent an evolutionary change or a revolutionary one. It is fairly easy to argue for the former position, since fundamentally all that the Internet does is to lower the cost of transmitting information. However, it is much more fun to argue for the latter view, and Bob Garfield is clearly in this second camp.
In The Chaos Scenario, Garfield uses a mix of colorful language and well-chosen examples to argue that the so-called digital revolution “isn’t just some news-magazine cover headline. It’s an actual revolution, yielding revolutionary changes, thousands or millions of victims and an entirely new way of life.” The principle implication of this shift is a fundamental undermining of most existing business models for media firms — Garfield envisions the end of traditional advertising agencies, newspapers and other traditional news organizations, and most network television programming.
Garfield, a longtime media columnist and host of National Public Radio’s On the Media, offers a clear picture of how the advertising business will need to change in this new world, as well as some thoughts about what this will mean for the news business. The central focus of Garfield’s picture of the future is what he calls “listenomics,” which he defines as “the art and science of cultivating relationships with individuals in a connected, increasingly open-source environment.” He then commences to offer a series of examples of what this will look like. These range from Lego Corporation’s “mindstorms” to a vast array of “widgets” for the computer desktop to virtual, self-defined religious congregations to “ten rules for word-of-mouth advertising.”
Garfield clearly hopes that listenomics will catch on and become as widely recognized as freakonomics or wikinomics. In reality, this is a variation on a relatively old argument in the management literature about the need to listen to your customer and to be willing to change. And the idea of building individual relationships with customers is central to most service models of the media business. However, what makes this concept feel new here is an endless series of examples demonstrating that most media managers (including some very prominent ones) don’t seem to get it—it may be part of the academic literature, but that knowledge clearly has yet to transfer to the various media industries.
The focus that Garfield puts on listening actually hinders the potential value of the book. It causes him to miss the opportunity to make more of two changes that underlie listenomics, changes that are more fundamental for advertising and journalism professionals: the declining importance of mass, and the fact that information (content) is no longer what is scarce. The first of these he calls attention to in chapter 1, but then largely leaves in the background. One could just as easily argue that it is because of the shift from mass to targeted (including targets of one) audiences that the need to listen arises. This is certainly at the heart of Google’s model. What Garfield does make clear is that it is not simply this change itself that matters, but its economic implications. He points out that mass advertising was a solution to the problem of a lack of information and that having the necessary information to effectively target advertising messages is inherently more efficient. This means that marketers need to spend less to get their message out. Moreover, in the context of the Internet and the increased competition it enables, it also means that media firms have less pricing power. The combination is devastating for the traditional revenue model of these firms.
The second change — the declining scarcity of information—is clearly implicit in many of the points he makes throughout the book, but only occasionally does he directly refer to it. Three dynamics are at work here: (1) Individuals have access to many more sources of information; (2) The computing power underlying digital technologies enables pieces of information to be stored, searched, and linked to one another; and (3) Every individual with access to the Internet (not just professionals) becomes a potential contributor. Together, these three make consumer attention what is scarce, and managing the flow of information the primary task.
Garfield puts most of his focus on the third dynamic, offering examples that range from the amateur-produced ads that were shown during the Super Bowl to Minnesota Public Radio’s “Public Insight Journalism.” For him these are manifestations of listenomics, not something separate that leads to a need for listening. For media managers, understanding the shift from “publishing” to “listening” may be of primary importance. However, for mass communication professionals of all types, “de-massification” and the shift from producing content to managing its flow are even more fundamental in terms of the skill sets they will need in the future.
Change will likely come more slowly than Garfield predicts. After all, executives on the other side of advertising transactions are just as resistant to change as those in the agencies — one only has to look to the prices paid for ads during this year’s Super Bowl for evidence. However, his case for the inevitability of fundamental change is rock solid. The book is an easy and enjoyable read, and one that mass communication instructors will find very useful for stimulating conversations with students.
DAN SULLIVAN
University of Minnesota