The prediction, in brief:

The rapidly declining effectiveness of mass media, coupled with the rise of addressable, interactive media – one-to-one media – makes one-to-one marketing necessary for any competitor to survive and prosper in the Interactive Age. The new rules of engagement governing business competition will focus on customer share rather than market share.

Predictor: Schrage, Michael

Prediction, in context:

In a 1994 article about advertising in the digital age for Wired magazine, Michael Schrage, an MIT Media Lab fellow and columnist for Adweek magazine, writes:”Companies will have a new advantage: the computational power to remember every detail of a customer’s transaction history. (It’s about time. After all, customers have always been able to remember their interactions with companies.) Manufacturers and service providers are bringing to market an increasing assortment of highly customized goods and services – ‘customerized’ products, individually tailored to meet individual needs, one customer at a time. The rapidly declining effectiveness of mass media, coupled with the rise of addressable, interactive media – one-to-one media – makes one-to-one marketing necessary for any competitor to survive and prosper in the Interactive Age. The new rules of engagement governing business competition will focus on customer share rather than market share. Success in this new environment will require: Producing a high-quality product and service … Developing long-term relationships with customers … Differentiating among customers, so as to allocate the most effort and resources to those customers who are the most valuable … Initiating, maintaining, and improving dialogues with individual consumers, abandoning the old-fashioned advertising monologues of mass media.”

Date of prediction: January 1, 1994

Topic of prediction: Getting, Sharing Information

Subtopic: Advertising/PR

Name of publication: Wired

Title, headline, chapter name: Is Advertising Dead? Adviruses, digimercials and memegraphics: The Future of Advertising is the Future of Media

Quote Type: Direct quote

Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/2.02/advertising_pr.html

This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Anderson, Janna Quitney