One thing about golf is you get 3-4 hours to get better acquainted with someone you either know or have never met. The latter was the case this week. I belong to a golf league that is not a strict format, where people can come and go as they have time.
I had the chance to golf with someone I have seen but never been teamed up with, named Todd. He is a retired math teacher. Both he and his wife lived in Kent, Ohio, and worked at Kent State College. He was a teacher, and she was an administrator. He was a better golfer (had a handicap of 9 while I am a 14, and I am getting back into golf shape).
We shared stories about how we both ended up in the same town in North Carolina, our kids, our work histories, and even the layout of our houses (which are very similar).
One thing he said that I found enlightening was that kids never think math is important, but today we have computers, calculators, and careers like engineering and AI that are very math-centric. I replied, “We are the last generation that lived in both the analog and digital worlds. Our kids have never known life without computers, iPhones, and cable TV.”
That got me thinking later about how our technology has changed communication, news, and how we ultimately perceive our world.
Rabbit Ears
I remember as a kid crying because after a hard day playing in the summer sun, I fell asleep and missed the night's episode of Batman. It would never air again, and the world just crumbled around my dream of becoming a superhero.
Everything was ‘Must See TV' because we were living in a time when we had rabbit ears to collect the 3 main broadcast channels (VHF – CBS, NBC, ABC) and local channels (UHF – PBS, and others). The times were fraught with chaos (Vietnam, Kent State, assassinations, and more), and wonder and hope (The Moon Landing, Woodstock, and Laugh-In).
The news all had older white men who all basically reported events without bias, and with the stature of a trusted father figure.
We also got our news from newspapers. My parents subscribed to the Chicago Tribune, and The Daily Herald (national/metro news and local county happenings). On Sunday, the paper was so big that we needed a wheelbarrow to get it in the house!
In the 1970s, commentators started calling Baby Boomers the “Me Generation,” capturing a shift from the collective causes of the 1960s toward personal fulfillment, self‑expression, and individual identity.
Cable TV was the beginning of on-demand, but also the biasing of opinion with the news, and ultimately created a culture of the Me Generation.
That all accelerated in the 1980's with cable, and in the late 1990s with the DVR. Now we had a choice of the opinions we wanted to hear, and we could record almost anything and watch it when we wanted (no longer tethered to when things were broadcast).
In the 1980s and 90s, I remember listening to what were called ‘Shock Jocks' — disc jockeys on the radio that skirted the edge of FCC rules and did bits, pranks, and entertained us in ways never seen before. The pinnacle happened in Chicago, where I was listening, when Steve Dahl invaded a White Sox ball game and stormed the field to burn Disco records (called Disco Demolition). That was broadcast on all the news stations.
Convergence
If you look at what the iPhone, YouTube, Social Media, and Podcasting, along with Netflix, TikTok, and now AI have done to our collective media ecosystem as a whole, it has made the newspaper, radio, and TV almost irrelevant.
The average age that watches TV news is 40-80 years old. Newspapers are dying, and radio and TV are on life support.
This is causing reporters to move from being employed to becoming entrepreneurs with podcasting (mini TV shows) and Substack (subscription news channels). We have gone from trusting the news to not trusting it (AI is supercharging that) to trusting a personality. We choose our information based on what we want to hear.
We are also in the midst of the rise and fall of personality or influencer channels.
You can explicitly weave “Brocasting” and “the Manisphere” (or “Siscasting”) into the old operating system of marketing that’s now breaking down. Those once seen as experts or voices of reason are now being shunned because they are more about hawking supplements, coaching, and bitcoin information than education or thought leadership that affects you personally in a positive way.
This information-delivery paradigm is experiencing a shift in what people consume and where they consume it. We are more likely to watch 60 1-minute clips than listen to a one-hour webinar, video, or podcast.
Most business people are busy scrolling through quick clips in their feeds, but they still make time for a few 20–60-minute podcasts or videos each week. These short-form videos are great for getting lots of views, while the longer videos offer more in-depth information.
The New Marketing Mindset
You or someone in your company is now competing one-on-one with influencers and your competitors. The days of the company voice are narrowing to a professional spokesperson with a personality that evokes both entertainment and trust.
Our messages need to be both short-form and long-form. That means you can create long-form thought leadership content, but you need to think it through so you can create short or sentiment pieces that have value while driving people to consume the full message.
You need to make that content appeal across radio, TV, and newspapers. People are consuming the written word, video, and voice in varying degrees, not as separate entities, but as a cohesive message.
The days of buying ads in the AI age are going the way of the ‘Brocasters' because your content is the ad in segments that have to be compelling, informational, and must touch a nerve.
The key to making this all work is like cable TV. People choose content based on their time, platforms, and biases. People are becoming tired of and immune to fear and negativity, and are looking for hope and inspiration to improve their lives. This is more relevant in business work than ever before, given the choices and uncertainty of the business climate today!
The main things that build trust are consistency and telling it like it is. You may feel like you can choose your audience, but in reality, your audience chooses to spend their time and attention capital with you before they will spend their career or financial capital with your company.
Closing Thought
Seeing a bunch of rabbit ears (or bunnies) jumping on a trampoline is about as believable as someone saying, “I killed LinkedIn lead generation with these 5 ChatGPT prompts”. And you have a good reason to be skeptical of both.
The days of creating walking advice videos are being replaced with segmenting your long-form content into digestible bites. Those bites and the long-form content should ultimately lead to a human-to-human conversation. That is where business happens.
Just in case you are interested… both Todd and I shot an 87, and we came in second place with our team score!
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Comment below and share your thoughts, ideas, or questions about business-to-business sales and marketing today! Do you have a sales or marketing communications strategy that works for you? What tips or techniques can you share that work for you and your business?
To learn more about this and other topics on B2b Sales & Marketing, visit our podcast website at The Bacon Podcast.
