Future Shock: Marketing in an Era of Information Overload

This is a description of a new keynote I will be doing around the world beginning this summer through the rest of the calendar year. For those who are seeing me at one of my dates from now until the end of June, those keynotes are themed around my first book Disruptive Marketing or on a topic that really interests me, Digital Nomad-ism. But I wanted to shake things up because I'm seeing and experiencing so many things now and analyzing social data that shows we aren't truly ready for the digital transformation we've been racing to set up because we're simply doing it to measure and manage things without truly understanding how it will affect collective behavior. We are under the impression we have smarter systems to help us but we are still unable to measure what the value of a "Like" is.

After re-reading Alvin Toffler's book Future Shock for the eighth time and because he passed away just last year I figured I would pay homage to him with a select few presentations of this keynote. The first city to experience it will be Portland, Oregon (of course!) at Digital Summit in July. Let me know if you have interest in me presenting a personalized version to your company, workshop or event for the remainder of the second half of the 2017 calendar year. I'm taking bookings for it now along with a disruptive brand strategy workshop I'm offering in conjunction with The Blake Project. Toffler worked in a factory for many years before he wrote a book in his forties. He toiled in obscurity like so many who study human behavior by immersing themselves in it. I still believe those people who do things and talk about them are more interesting than those who simply talk about things without ever doing them.

This topic of human dependency on technology is also giving me ideas for my second book which may work with neurosurgeons and utilize Artificial Intelligence to see how all of this digital technology truly affects us as human beings in both the long and short run. We have tons of data and studies on what television does to us. Maybe it's time to figure out objectively how the communications of the 21st Century really helps or hinders us. As a communications theorist I feel it's a topic we really need to talk about, study, research, converse about and understand.

In any case, here's a description of the Future Shock keynote I hope you will be able to witness in person or via video throughout the social web. Enjoy!

FUTURE SHOCK: Marketing in an Era of Information Overload

Social thinkers of the 20th Century like Alvin Toffler identified four different groups of people when they face rapid change. Deniers, Specialists, Reversionists and Super-Simplifiers. You probably know each one of these people in your personal or professional life. To truly breakthrough in the world of the communications economy in the 21st Century we may need to be more like the fifth and sixth groups now starting to emerge. The fifth group is known as Visionaries. Those who understand that innovation, new products and new services are the way to get people talking about them because of their bold ambitions. The sixth group are Provocateurs. These are personalities who provoke, cause mayhem and disruption, information jam and do everything we’ve been told not to do growing up in life when it comes to manners and etiquette. They act this way in order to hijack the news-feed reactive behavior of now. While not something to aspire to, this behavior works and could be used by many in the fields of both the natural sciences and social sciences who struggle to gain a foothold with sectors of the population around adopting narratives (climate change, natural energy, electric cars, equal wages for women).

In this session learn how as the digital marketing overload engulfs us, analog movements centered around collective human behavior makes the most sense in the present. Learn why most KPIs like engagement are irrelevant even though social media marketers track it. Learn why most people reaching for their device in the morning are no different than someone who reaches for a crack pipe. Diagnose how bot strategies will make you question who it is you are actually engaging with on Twitter. Understand why reach is becoming an important indicator once again even though it is a holdover from an analog era. Learn why culture jamming is gaining relevance even though it is a practice over 20 years old. Learn how bots will require marketers to create experiences for both humans and robots based on an “internet of actions” and why voice commands are the new UI that may usurp how you’ve done everything the last decade.

This is a presentation that will test your adaptation to change. This is a presentation that will make you doubt and question. This is a presentation on how we all fight for space in our brains through subcults and lifestyle wars and how none of us truly digest information but instead snack and graze on it. This is a must attend presentation that will force you to face your own future shock.

Hosted and presented by Geoffrey Colon, Microsoft communications designer, social thinker and author of the book Disruptive Marketing: What Growth Hackers, Data Punks, And Other Hybrid Thinkers Can Teach Us About Navigating the New Normal. Geoffrey is a voice at the intersection of marketing, tech and popular culture and host of the podcast Disruptive FM.