We hear and read about “shifts” created by technology and examples of the influence on markets propagate daily.
Marketers jump on these shift vying for our attention aimed at
ultimately “tricking us into a transaction”. The irony of this behavior
is that technology will eventually turn the trick onto the markets.
That will happen when we, the consumers, gain more control over how we
interact with the markets.
Advertising In Reverse?
Doc Searls writes: Here in the VRM development community we’ve been talking (and in some cases working) for several years on the Personal RFP.
Technically an RFP is a “buyer-initiated procurement protocol” for
businesses doing business with businesses: B2B as they say. With VRM
the buyer is an individual. Hence, Personal RFP. Not a great label, but
one that businesses understand.
Every retailer and intermediary should be interested because the
promise of the Net for buyers is not an infinite variety of closed
silos, but a truly open marketplace where any buyer can do business
with any seller — and on the buyer’s terms and not just the seller’s.
Like everything else we will come to depend on utterly while
remaining absent in the present, VRM is thoroughly disruptive idea.
It’s always smart to get ahead of the curve by getting behind what will
bend it.
Doc’s writings help me bend my mind around what can be rather than
what is. What is represents existing thinking and behavior. What can be
represents how technology will “bend” both thinking and behavior
because intentions will change based on innovation fueled by new
knowledge.
Innovation Bends Intentions
Intentions are threaded in conversations.
Intentions motivate behavior and crowds form around conversations that
have an affinity to interest. Today the marketplace looks at all this
interest as a “forum” to insert advertisements aimed at catching
transactions. It is an old method and is in conflict with the
intentions of the “marketplace of conversations.
The landscape of social technology is evolving. The evolutions
demonstrates people’s intents and the data clearly shows that the
“peoples” intent is not relevant to ads. Rather the intent demonstrates
a “shift” in consumer behavior as it relates to learning, relating and
subsequently conversing around an affinity of interest.
People’s interest in products and services will remain relevant.
Finding said products and services is no longer relevant to traditional
advertising and marketing methods. What is becoming relevant is buyers
doing business with sellers but on buyers terms. The terms are changing
to findability, utility, reference and time sensitivity. Terms are like
rules and what was once the rules of the market will become the rules
of a different market. The different market is one which is
continually being empowered by the buyer rather than the seller.
When Rules Change, Markets Have To Change
Doc’s says it well “the
promise of the Net for buyers is not an infinite variety of closed
silos, but a truly open marketplace where any buyer can do business
with any seller — and on the buyer’s terms and not just the seller’s.” Buyers are getting smarter, more connected and influenced by other buyers. Technology will continue to advance and Doc’s vision of VRM will
become a reality sooner than later. Sooner when leaders of current
markets recognize the power of becoming leaders of tomorrows
marketplace.
Tomorrow is framed by what can’t be done today but what
should be done tomorrow. Doc sees what should be done and we’ll see
what leaders will help him bend the rules so it can be done.