Maximising your media impact FINAL:Layout 1
7/7/09
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The multimedia challenge to companies
“The most important thing to bear in
mind, in the midst of Internet hysteria, is that no new medium has ever killed off another; it has only influenced changes in it�. The key concepts in the near future are not obsolescence of traditional media but fragmentation, boundary blurring and cannibalisation. The rules for grabbing attention remain the same whatever the media, as does the reader’s need for narrative. Anyone looking for information has never had it so good. People no longer have to rely on the monopoly of a few national papers or, worse, their local city paper. News-aggregation sites such as Google News pull together thousands of sources from around the world. The good news for the media relations expert is that people are consuming more and more media, only in different ways. According to the MediaPhile Report, by media analysts Screen Digest and investment bank ABN Amro, the average person will be spending 60 hours per week consuming media by 2010. Reading books, magazines and newspapers combined will account for just 72 minutes per week, while we could be spending eight and a half hours per week on either mobile telephony, online or using leisure software. Remember, however, that most magazines and newspapers have online offerings. The turbulence of the media world can be seen in the apparent contradictions and paradoxes of consumption.
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