DIGITAL IS A FAD

There is no such thing as digital….there I said it, and I am dead serious about it.

Remember the movie “The Matrix”? Remember when the hero of the story, Neo, had to choose between the red pill and the blue pill? A choice between one reality or another.

It turns out that when it comes to marketing and communication, a lot of people in big companies or marketing still have similar views. They think online or digital marketing is to be seen and treated separate from offline or traditional marketing. They are viewed as different realities and therefore need different budgets, different teams or different departments. And sometimes this results in difficult communication between departments, making it a challenge to work efficiently.

In the next couple of minutes I’ll try to explain why I strongly feel we shouldn’t use the word digital anymore. A discussion on LinkedIn about digital as a metric to measure companies and people as a definition for success sparked me to write this article. So thank you for the inspiration. Things indeed have changed, and I think that as marketing professionals we can take it to the next level.

In “The Matrix” where Neo makes the choice, and therefore picks either one of two realities, he wakes up to find there aren’t two realities. There is only one reality; the world in which we live. A world where both realities are merged. Our hero could not see this until he truly experienced reality as it really was. Even though this is just a movie plot, the parallel to today’s world of marketing is quite evident.

To put it bluntly.., there is no digital! Our digital and our offline existences have merged so much that we can’t speak of a definite separation anymore. Of course years ago when the internet was fresh, digital was a way to describe the changes in the world of communication. It was a term to describe the transition from analog communications to online communications. Today we are always connected, and communication through digital channels has become a much integrated part of our lives.

The creative industry created the term digital to describe new ways of reaching audiences and new ways of communicating with those audiences. But it may very well be time to  redefine the meaning of the word digital. Or at least redefine the way in which we use it. Brands, marketers and companies use the term digital to measure credibility. If you don’t have digital added to your resume or company profile you could miss out on pitches, clients or job opportunities. The term itself has become more important than the mindset behind it and that is a major fallacy. The real value is not in the word. The real value is in the way human beings have evolved because of what digital changed in the world.

Digital is a fad
Remember 15 years ago when CEO’s, CFO’s and traditional marketers were saying that the internet and digital would be a fad? Well as strange as it might be, they were right. Digital really is a fad. But it’s not a fad in the way they thought it was going to be. It was not just a fling of technology that made no impact like they predicted, in fact it made a huge impact. The word digital gives meaning to how people have shifted the way they communicate, how they consume content and even how people’s mindsets have changed because of innovation and technology. Digital became such an integrated part of our lives, that it has become redundant to use the word digital. Very soon Artificial Intelligence, machine learning or Virtual Reality are going to be part of the next revolution in how we communicate and interact as a species, and in due time this will also become a fad once it is a normal, integrated part of our lives. And who knows what happens after that? It might be neural communication; who knows. What we do know, is that these revolutions drastically change the way we interact and communicate with the world around us. What we consider to be normal behavior and interaction today could become obsolete in 5 years from now. Nobody really uses a horse to go to work anymore, right?

In the article that sparked the writing of this essay, the author believed that digital isn’t a swim lane, it’s the water we swim in as communication professionals. As i do understand the intention of this article and i do agree that things have changed drastically because of digital communication, digital is NOT the water. People are.

People were, people are, and people always will be the water in which we swim. The channels our industry refers to as “digital”, like all other communication channels, have their own way of altering the behavior and fulfilling the needs of the audience you target. And yes, these channels changed the playing field faster in ways we never could have imagined, but saying LinkedIn, Twitter or Google are simply to be summarized as "digital" is like saying that newspapers, billboards and tv ads are “traditional” and should be treated the exact same way. All channels, whether traditional or “digital” are of great value if used right. The rise of digital technology and social media platforms have only added several new valuable channels to our vocabulary, and with that new ways to communicate. Which, consequently, opens up new, brilliant ways of knowing who the people are, that hide behind the data you collect. But this does not make all the other possibilities to connect with your audience in a non-digital way redundant.

Digital is not the buzzword we should be using to differentiate our businesses. Audience is the one and only relevant buzzword that transcends channels and tools. So don’t ask which channels should we use? The right question is, what channels are used by our audience? If you are only focussing on the relevance of “digital” as an agency or as a company, if you only focus on the tools and not on the audience it means you are not doing right by the audience you are aiming for.  

The changing communication landscape changed our professional credibility. It empowered us creatives to create stunning creative work based on creative intelligence and experience,  allowing us to back that up with metrics and data. It made our job easier and more rewarding for us and our clients! I love these developments, and see them for that what they really are; a mindset that empowers us to connect our clients to their audiences. A toolset that connects all the dots, from print, to retail, to mobile, to desktop. We can leave digital behind now because it is past us, the next fad will be here soon, and it will also not be the water we swim in. People will be, as they have always been, and as they always will be!