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"The Great Walls of Audio - Video Houses Are Trembling"

The earliest sign of changing times was the demise of Detroit's audio - video community rag, "The Big Idea". Without so much as a, "goodbye". This hoity toity tell it like it ain't periodical bit the dust... HARD. And unfortunately for them nobody shed a tear. Worse, a lot of people in the business of media didn't even know who they were.

Strange days.

I wish I could have been smart and saved the cuss out phone calls I used to get on my 800 number. I cannot tell you who they were from but I have a sneaking suspicion that it was from some high ups in traditional media. This was around the time when I was talking to a lot of execs in local radio from CBS, Clear Channel and getting feedback from pillars in the online community. The message was for me to basically...shut my cake hole.. and quick.

But I never had any intention of shutting up my mouth. The rants only made me tell more of the truth and go out of my way to help small business in this world of arrogant media assheads and bully's.

I'm still here.

And in that time more traditional media houses have closed up shop and locked their doors. For good. More disturbing is the recent lay offs in Detroit Advertising arenas. This is something I want to shed a little light on.

THE DARK DAYS AFTER THE DOT COM ERA
There was a lot of fear in the days following the dot com era. I can tell you first hand that the party was definitely over. Too much money has been spilled and lost. The streets were literal war zones and the heat was felt on both the East and West coast. I was there. I was in NYC when all hell broke loose and tons of venture capital was literally burned up.

Michigan never really got it right. In fact, as I write this many media firms are hell bent on keeping up with the newest finagling in Flash. There never seems to be any focus on what it takes to get and keep a customer online. But in the end, it doesn't really matter.

Since the good talent was now too expensive to obtain. Agencies had to rely on mediocre low paying talent to fill up its cubes. This digital fluffy had nothing to do with OPT In customer relationship building as it did was take the money and run with it. What we ended up with in Michigan was a real washed out version of the dot com era. This digital gibberish was a pale shade of the real bad boys who ran the scene right into the ground. Now that second wave of talent is feeling the sting by being let back onto the street due to a sagging auto industry.

STREET FIGHTING - AMERICAN STYLE
The University of Michigan has recently appointed itself as experts in the field of Search Engine Marketing which is laughable. The heads who run their departments have no accreditation in Search Engine Optimization --- have lied about MY past by saying they met with me in person, which is not true -- but more importantly the consumer should be aware of this monstrosity. They stand in the way of getting totally screwed.

Other SEO firms have stepped up and said irreverant things - even some arguing that RSS feeds were "simply not important". This statement is beyond ridiculous and its how mobile media gets distributed and played.

The big media houses can create car commercials and rack up a huge budget. But these same houses have no real way of getting their material distributed properly. This is a situation that I have continued to see in large major markets. So you will end up with a large, "Titanic" production with no real way of distributing it online.

WHATS WRONG WITH DVDS?
The problem with creating cheap DVDs and mailing them out is that a lot of people won't play them. Its not that the material on them is not any good, when in fact it is fine. We are entering a new wave of human nature and its taking laziness to a whole new level. People are not opening their mail, dvd's never get played, and product and services are never exposed. There are too many steps in getting the marketing message into the right hands.

By going completely digital with the message we can change this. Now we can channel it through online distribution networks. We can assure that our marketing messages get played.

You'll have to do your own street fighting and ask the important questions yourself. You can market smart or continue to support these all day - Adult Day Care Centers, (aka Advertising Agencies - complete with catered food and video game systems for bored on the job 30 somethings) to get your marketing messages out.

Hooray for Youtube.com and Hooray for the new IPHONE.

Now, you got a fair chance of winning this street fight.

Ted Cantu posted this on June 21, 2007 at 12:37 pm