There are not 100 media companies.

There are not 1000.

There are not 10,000.

There were the newspapers. There was the radio. In France, there was a TV channel. There were 3, then 6, then 18, then 24 free channels. There was Internet. There were the newspapers on Internet. There were television channels, the radios on Internet. There was the mobile. There were the tablets. There are the social networks.

Your company has to deal with more and more media channels to communicate your messages on your products and your brand. Your marketing director expands his teams to work on all these media. Your communication director industrializes her processes, to manage to know all her contacts, to maintain her influence and to communicate her messages, with difficulty, but she makes it. The media agencies help you to cope. You keep going.

You feel there is a problem. It is bigger. It is more expensive. But you keep going. The question is until when? Until how many media companies?

Do you want to survive in the current world now and for the 10 years to come?

There are not more and more media companies.

Do not try to improve your organization to manage a larger number of media companies.

Do not try to increase the number of people working on communication, media, or public relations.

Do not try to optimize your processes, your methods or your messages.

Do not try to make always more.

There are not more and more media companies.

There are 7 billion media companies.

Changing scope. Changing scale. Changing paradigm.

Everyone is a media. Each habitant of the world is a media.

Who can say bad stuff about your company? Everyone.

Who can say good things about your company? Everyone.

Dave Caroll whose guitar was broken by United Airlines in 2008 was not a famous journalist, neither a star, nor the owner of a television channel, just a singer. The video of its song on YouTube to tell its mishap was seen more than 10 million times.

Everyone has the means of writing, of photographing, of filming and of diffusing everything he wants. Everyone has the means of doing it in a few seconds. Everyone has the means of doing it towards the whole world.

Media are a “process allowing the distribution, the diffusion or the communication of works, documents, or sound or audio-visual messages (press, cinema, display, broadcasting, remote transmission, videotex, cable television, telematics, telecommunication). ” Larousse

Each blog is a media.

Each Twitter account is a media.

Each Facebook page is a media.

Each Youtube account is a media.

Each smartphone is a media.

Like Eric Scherer tells it so well, “the audience, the companies and all people who did not belong to the media clergy, realized that they could use the tools reserved till now for the media and make use of it to speak, to diffuse, broadcast at quasi worthless prices.[...] With the removal of the barriers at the entry, everyone can become a media.”

Such as a historical media, such as a journalist, each person can take information, publish it, compile it, transform it, and publish it. It is his message, his information. He is the media. He is the message.

Consequences for you? Each point of contact with your company is an occasion to disseminate an information about you. All that your company produces, a service, an object, an experience, an e-mail, a publicity, a video, a guide, a conversation, is a content to broadcast.

It is what Brian Solis tells us with “the audience of your audience”

“As a digital society, we are ushering in an era where everyday people form a global network of self-empowered social intermediaries that accelerate and proliferate the reach and effect of information and experiences.”

Change your paradigm.

You face 7 billion media.

You can try to control something on 1,000 media. You can give in-house instructions, write procedures, nominate the rare persons authorized to speak with the media.

You do not control anything anymore with 7 billion media companies.

In May 2013, Mike Jeffries the owner of Abercrombie did not certainly think that an interview of 2006 was going to lead to a Youtube video of Greg Karber, opposite to his policy and the values of its brand, viewed more than 7 million times in a few days.

You will never be everywhere. You cannot be everywhere.

You will never know where the next issue or the next rumor can come from

Do not try to make always more. Make it another way.

Influence

You can only influence and find relays.

You can only make… public relations with… 7 billion media companies!

Find which ones are favorable to you, which can say positive things on your brand, or tell beautiful stories on your products.

They are your relays, your presence and your representatives where you are not.

Listen to them to know them.

Discuss with them to understand them.

Engage them to convince them.

#LittleSecret

The first of these media companies are your satisfied customers….

Treat your customers as you treat the traditional ones.

I promise you that, they are your best media companies.

[This is the english version of a french post “Il y a 7 milliard de médias. Changez de paradigme”]