Its suggested there is a new world order in commercial communications. Wrong.  You cant have the "NEW" which requires change and still have "ORDER. Instead it's a New World Disorder. This is the new marketing communications reality. Disorder is all around us. Fast change is the new reality.

All because the consumer is in charge of the marketing communications business

Once upon a  time, media owners had order and authority when demand exceeded supply. No longer

Then advertisers held the fort with strong brands and limited consumer choice. No longer

More recently media agencies saw them selves as the new media owners with scale and leverage. No longer do they provide the integrated multi-layered offering advertisers require.

Neither media owners nor advertisers nor media agencies rule. Now the Consumer runs the show.

The consumer pays more for media leaving advertisers as the minority funders with no single medium or media owners fulfilling the consumers' needs. We see three things to do make for safer times

Work together

Media owners have to work together not in that old and failed way of one medium selling another. That is a proven formula for failure. Instead it's partnership to expand effectiveness and build new communications revenue streams. media owners cant switch off once the sale is complete. That's just the new beginning

Measure the benefits

Let's get away from the crude and hopelessly out of date metrics of "CPT" "CPM" Discounts" and "Ad awareness". Media auditors, market research companies and procurement managers have to move on. And as we have commented elsewhere measurement has to be built in for continuous operation; not just tacked on at the end. The new metrics come from the internet as the conduit for the new behavior based metrics

Doing it better - differently tomorrow

The widest form of cross-platform deals come from just two lead platforms: TV & Internet

Holding back the growth of cross-platform deals has been the issue of price versus extra value. If the cross-platform deal is just about "lower prices than deals done individually", the advertisers' have missed the point. A 360 degree execution should be valued more strongly

The major problem is the need for better metrics and the internet marketers are the leaders in providing crude metrics which may not be good enough such as "cost per click"

For a growing number of advertisers the NEW WORLD DISORDER is a nightmare whilst for others it's a delight and an opportunity. The laws of value and effectiveness in this frontier town look somewhat primitive but it's great to be here

(Based on a paper presented to the Time Warner Round Table Global Media Group on October 2nd 2007)