Social Media Overpowers NBC: A Vision

RFPs may suck, as Tom Searcy's new book proclaims, but Story Worldwide was recently asked in an RFP to write down Story's "vision for the future of social media" and I thought it was a really good question. Where exactly is all this going? What does it mean? Here's our take: Story’s vision is that “social media” soon will be called just plain “media” and the world will accept that the power to publish or broadcast to large audiences has passed irrevocably from a select few to virtually everyone. It is common wisdom these days that marketers no longer own their brands; the audience does. It’s critical to understand that this is true because marketers are no longer the masters of communicating about their brands; social networks have given that power to everyone. This profoundly game-changing democratization of mass communications is going to accelerate. One day soon, social media will trump the power of traditional media, meaning that national newspapers, network TV and brand advertisers will become, in effect, just another voice in the crowd. On that day, brands without a credible presence on social networks will cease to be competitive.