Shifting Sands Form New Media and Marcom Layers

David Carr of The New York Times offers some food for thought in a year-end piece on changes in the media business.

Here are three of his more cogent points:

1) Every cable channel with two nickels and more than a few digital enterprises is financing the kind of narrative television that used to be available only at a certain time on a certain network.

2) Our media identity is becoming ubiquitous, and transportable: someday, I should be able to walk into a hotel in Kansas, tell the television who I am and find everything I have bought and paid for, there for the consuming.

3) Everything that can be mashed together will be.

Carr’s second point is interesting from a marketing perspective. Marketers have long wanted to read consumers’ minds, to be one step ahead of them, ready with the perfect offering at the right moment.

With the help of technology, the hotel of the future will know it’s YOU when you pull up in a car or cab–your mobile phone will automagically alert the hotel staff about your arrival, your reservation, which newspaper you want left at your door and whether or not you want turndown service.

Carr envisions speaking to a screen upon arrival at the Kansas hotel. I don’t. I imagine customer service professionals at the ready, better equipped than ever to read my mind.

For a different look at Carr’s piece, see this Forbes piece by Anthony Wing Kosner, who recasts Carr’s “New Rules” through a Neolithic lens.