Essential reading from The Counterintuitive CEO Blog, whether you’re a CEO or not. Thanks to my friend Mike Troiano of Crimson Hexagon for pointing this one out.
Here’s the deal. We’re at a portal between eras: what was, and what will be. We’re not talking about change. We’re talking about CHANGE. There’s a difference.
Key takeaways from the article:
1) Digital will be mandatory, not a choice. But you already knew this, or you wouldn’t be reading my blog.
2) Brand loyalty will be limited. The news from the recent CMO study already wasn’t good news. Can we afford for it to get worse? I don’t think so.
3) Customers will look very unfamiliar, as shown in the Forrester report, The State Of Consumers And Technology: Benchmark 2008. You may not like it, and you may not understand it, but your customer is being changed by technology — and your customer will change your company.
4) The war for people will be intense. Now’s a smart time to hunker down and develop skills that will be worth fighting for. Which side of the portal are you on: the past, or the future?
5) You will sell differently. Many traditional channels won’t survive in the new era — because the new consumer won’t pick them up or tune them in. You will have to reach customers in new ways — blogs, Facebook, Google, Twitter, and whatever supersedes them.
6) The way you innovated is dead. This is actually good news: the old way hadn’t worked anyway for a long time. Isn’t it a relief to know it’s not your fault? 
It’s powerful, exciting stuff: When I was a partner in the digital agency I founded, Brandscape, we worked for a really smart Boston-based company called ShopLink.
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