Sometime, somehow, somewhere during the last ten years we reached and crossed a tipping point. We individualised communications on a global scale. Now, the past is dead. It just remains to be buried. But why?

Two-way conversations have broken out. Web 2.0 is the foundation of our new order. In a swift and continuing evolution, the internet’s progress in realising the promise of the nineties has been stunning.

For the first time individuals and consumers can be heard. This has confused many (or is that most?) businesses. It confounds people in power everywhere. The whole ecosystem has changed, and is changing – more rapidly than at any time in recorded history.

Many of what you would expect to be the shrewdest people in power missed it. They missed it because they didn’t want change. But evolution happens. Species morph regardless of their wishes. We are out of the chrysalis.

Ironically we reached the ‘tipping point’ round about the time of the change to a new millennium. Suddenly we moved from The American Century into a new era, not controlled by any one nation or any one company.

We’ve moved to ‘The Digital Century’. Everyone is now dealing with the implications of that change. Conventional wisdoms no longer necessarily represent the best course of action. This new era means you have to throw out all your previous conceptions of what your business model is in this new era. Why?

It’s simple! The implications of digitisation means that everything has changed. Now we need to reflect on the changes and ask questions.

Look at music - remember Napster? Executives in the music industry bemoan the losses they are suffering post Napster. It’s an era of file sharing all enabled by broadband. Except it’s easy to play victim. What they forgot is that markets are not about things. They are about people. People want to share the emotion that music delivers.

The music industry wanted to maintain the existing ecosystem, built over generations: Give away the music to mass media (radio); sell shiny discs to retailers; buy ads in other mass media. And keep the artists in a perpetual state of indebtedness so that they have an inferior negotiating position.

In a post-digital age that entire model comes apart. Everyone is in the media business when they are connected – and in particular savvy artists. The record industry missed that. Or ignored it. Not so strange is that many of those executives aren’t working in the industry any more. Now the game has changed again. Video is the game changer. If you are in business; any business; video will rock your world.

Look at YouTube. A little upstart company figured out how to make it easy for people to upload and store video in a convenient format…. A billion and a half dollars later they are part of Google, and incidentally hardly making a dent in the balance sheet along the way.

TV lost its dominance in media to the Internet in the last few years. It still holds absolute sway as a medium, but the trend is away from TV. It’s to the Internet. The trend for information, for entertainment, for engaging in community - the internet.

Yet that trend started before the Internet became a video medium. Now? It’s unstoppable.

The secret driver is that it’s community. It’s the ability for consumers to be part of the conversation: to engage, to shape, to participate if they want…and by so doing, to accelerate the momentum.  That giant, once woken, will not go back to sleep. There will be a tectonic shift to the pre-existing ecosystem – whatever it is, in whichever industry, provided that people can connect to a network. Bet on it. It’s certain.

Like it or not, video is the new, now thing that people want to play with, be entertained by, communicate through. See, touch, create, and understand. All video.

We can shoot video on our cameras, with our phones, or use our laptops. That which we can do, we will do. Hence the record industry falls apart, and music? Music booms. It uses the internet to prosper and distribute. But only in a totally disintermediated world where the role of the record companies is fundamentally changed – those that survive, anyway.

Video will dwarf music. Now we can see as well as hear as well as think. Video is motion. People are emotional. The two are made for each other. So whatever your doubts, put them aside. Communications are now all about video. This has incredible implications for you, your company and your competition.

Companies that take time to build their capacity to communicate using video are going to be the big winners. There won’t be any second chances this time round, either. Video on your website is the first easy thing to integrate. A baby step, sure, but important. Video enables you to integrate emotion into a message. Next: is the ability to include video messages from your customers. Then comes video email.

Can you see the huge implications here for your network, the bandwidth that you are going to consume? Maybe it will mean abuse by employees, or abuse  by customers who are able to post openly to your website… problems are going to increase. Corporate lawyers are going to tell management to lock everything down. There will be paranoia among some, boldness among others. There’s confusion among most.

Two fundamental and universal laws drive everything: The laws of physics and the laws of human nature. The laws of physics are that electrons and therefore data will travel at the speed of light. Laws of human nature determine that people will try to get as much as they can for the least possible price. In other words everything that can be digitised will become commoditised.

The ripples of this will mean that any brand that doesn’t work to understand what the end user or consumer really wants will not know enough about the market to have a productive conversation with its resellers, agents, or even its advertising agency.

Companies are going to have to understand that just placing ads through Google is not a panacea. It’s just a band aid. So let’s all look beyond search. What is it that motivates people to search? What information will you have seeded with customers before they search? Has the marketing department developed corporate messaging in video? Is it on YouTube?

Think you don’t have enough time as it is, without having to look at a whole bunch of things that seem totally frivolous? Think it’s sort of airhead kids stuff? Perhaps, the Jetsons revisited? Let me put it more pointedly.

These things may be more important for the company you work for next. If the company you work for right now doesn’t get the message, they probably won’t be around for more than the next five years in their current form.

Think about it. You might want to learn about what’s happening, what works – on their dime, then start figuring out what your real career options are. The same old won’t be the same old any more.

Instead my mantra for tomorrow’s business is:

Marketing isn’t a cost centre. It’s a profit centre. But only if you shift focus to the web. The corporate web site, corporate blogs – make them all carry ads. Even for other companies.

In any event the corporate website needs to be more like a blog. Static copy that doesn’t change day to day, nor does it attract people. The web means every company is in the media business. Every media company needs to aggregate eyeballs. Every media company needs the ability to sell ads.

That’s only one small beginning in the change in the business ecosystem. But it is sweeping in its intensity and its velocity. When every business thinks of itself as a media company, then it follows, quite reasonably, that what will be adopted as the basis of business is the most viral means of communication possible – video.  It’s a new world. And it’s here today.

Email: chris.gilbey@vquence.com
Web: http://www.vquence.com/
Skype: chrisgilbey

Chris Gilbey is CEO of Vquence (www.vquence.com) , a start up in the video search and socialisation space. He is an investor in One Minute Media, a company producing corporate messaging for the web (www.oneminuteworld.com ). His blog is at www.perceptric.com Previous to Vquence he was CEO of Lake Technology (ASX), which he sold to Dolby Laboratories. He then consulted on global marketing to the consumer division of Dolby. Prior to that he was a successful entrepreneur in the Australian music and media industries. (He was involved in the early careers of AC/DC and InXs, among others).