DNA09: 'Facilitate' and forget about advertising and publishing divides, says advertising expert
Jonathan MacDonald outlines his ideas about 'facilitation' at DNA 2009 event
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It's time to break down the traditional divisions between publishing and advertising territories, new media consultant Jonathan MacDonald said yesterday at the Digital News Affairs 2009 conference .
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MacDonald, who is senior consultant to the CEO and chairman at advertising agency Ogilvy , and has recently launched a 'communications movement' at EverySingleOneofUs.com , told Journalism.co.uk that 'facilitation' is about stepping away from the 'insular control freak mentality' that just a 'privileged few' have the means to publicise their ideas.
"Create a set of facilitation tools that can be aggregated into one place, or distributed via feeds and act as that faciliator. Whether the newspapers know it yet or not, I would place my career on the fact that that is the future," he advised publications.
"Advertisers need to be facilitators as well as broadcasters. We [the media] should surrender control to the populus."
Break down concepts of publishing space, he added, and embrace the community: "Things that are useful to people are useful; things that are entertaining to people, are entertaining; things that that are fun, are fun." Threadless.com was one good example, he said, where consumers are also part of the production process. Users design their own T-shirts, as part of the 'community-based' company's call for designs.
Similarly, the much-talked about Skittles campaign, which featured Twitter conversation about the brand on its homepage earlier this week, was another successful example of discarding entrenched publishing and advertising protocol, MacDonald said.
