Jeff Brooks channels Roy Williams. Good to stay grounded:
Just remember, a new medium is not a magic bullet. As brilliantly riffed by Roy Williams in his MondayMorningMemo: The Media Is Not the Message, the real issue is what you say, not where you say it:
Relevance is what determines whether an ad works or not. Every medium fails when it delivers a message no one cares about.He then enlarges on the importance of the message in something you should make part of your fundraising catechism:
- Ads that fail in one medium would usually have failed in any other.
- The medium is not the message.
- The message is the message.
- And the message is what matters most.
Yep, Marshall McLuhan was wrong.
There’s no way around it. You have to have a relevant message, or you’re sunk. Get that part right, and then you can start looking for media that take you forward.
hallelujah brother!
Jon,
My brother writes a blog called Glasshouse – lots of stuff there about media. He works for Waggener Edstrom and handles PR on behalf of Microsoft. http://glasshouse.waggeneredstrom.com/blogs/frankshaw/.