Gotcha

Monday night (Jan 29) was one of New York's great networking events, the Genesys Dinner, which Jim Kolleger holds each year prior to the Information Industry Summit, Aside from great conversation, some nice words about Esther Dyson, including a plaintive plea for just one more PC Forum (not happening, alas), the evening ended with an important five minutes from  Mark Walsh.

Mark has transitioned from the straight business world (Verticalnet, etc.) into the more political sphere. He was one of the key players behind Air America, the liberal radio talk network, and is now a commentator on MSNBC and XM.  He was decrying the movement in our political society toward sensationalizing "gotcha" moments. 

George Allen's Macaca moment was just one example, and the pouncing of the press on small individual statements, made in settings that thirty years ago would never have been reported, has led to a mean spirited trashing of people.

But Mark's key point is that in marketing, politics leads business.  Be prepared to see the "Swift Boating" of GM, on a site like www.gmisevil (not a real site I hope), paid for anonymously by one of their competitors. Smear tactics have become one of the unsavory and unfortunate weapons in the arsenal of political candidates. Alas,the Lincoln Douglass debates are no more. While the unexamined life may not be worth living, the fully examined life - each and every minute logged on cell phone cameras and uploaded, may be even worse.  And if businesses try to enhance themselves not with better products, but by trashing their competitors, we'll all suffer.

I think Mark is right that the "Gotcha" blogging and journalism will lead to more divisiveness and bitterness. In keeping with this blog's philosophy, Mark is hopefully a little too early with respect to corporate marketers, I'd like to think we can still avoid some of it.

There are ways of pointing out problems in a constructive way - see Mark Hurst's great www.thisisbroken.com site that let's you post stuff, and posts  FIXED buttons when the vendors fix things.

Perhaps a way too early warning will help - and examining one's own behavior.

Comments

[fred]

all you need to do is read valleywag and you'll see the same thing playing out in the corporate world

[HM] Yes, but the print media does not pick up Valleywag stories as quickly as political ones, perhaps because businesses advertise in print media, while politicians mainly use TV and Radio.

[Barry Caplan]

Howard - interesting thoughts! Early and way too early - that is my world too, especially DigiMedia here in Silicon Valley.

I think advances in digital distribution are fundamentally changing the "packet size" of information we process. Digital means it costs the same, arguably less, to discover and transmit a tiny packet of information directly to a targeted user - in the past you would have to have broadcast it widely to everyone to hit the small audience.

Now we can see all that traffic fly by and notice how much of it is precise or irrelevant to us as individuals, and wonder at how much information we as a society can really produce, distribute, and consume.

I don't know that there is anything good or bad about that...it is just a trend in communications that has been going on to this point for zillions of years, and, judging from your portfolio at First Round Capital, is likely to continue for quite some time to come! /Best, Barry Caplan