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There is a paradox here: as well as making
brands vulnerable to attack, the internet has
also strengthened them. In an almost limitless
universe of information, much of it unreliable,
with always a danger of fraud, invasion of privacy
or offensive content, people naturally
seek out trusted and reliable sources from the
offline world. Hence the success of big media
organizations and of familiar names like Wal-
Mart. So what has been taken with one hand
has been given with the other, weighing the
balance is practically impossible.
New ways of reaching the public
Scepticism about the impact of new ICTs is
essential because the field is over-hyped.
Computing, telecoms and technology companies
have huge marketing and PR budgets
dedicated to talking up the potential impact
of ICTs. Those who talk down the impact or
argue for a measured assessment have no
budget at all and are mainly quite isolated
academic voices. In fact the general mood in
academia has followed the wave of enthusiasm
for all things web related.
This article has looked at the evidence for
dramatic change so far, this is not to say that
great changes in communications patterns
may not emerge over the next decades. This
can happen very suddenly, as we saw in
Europe with text messaging (or SMS), and
there are many more technological possibilities
to be explored. Marketing using the very
accurate positional data captured by mobile
phones is a fascinating prospect, and one that
mobile companies may be pushed towards if
their margins continue to fall. Imagine being
able to alert people walking past a renovated
park that this was paid for by a corporate
social responsibility programme. Moreover,
3G networks would even be able to send a
short video clip. Equally, imagine how difficult
it would be to overcome public resistance to
disclosing personal information like your location
at a given moment.
Interactive television is another developing
medium, which uses digital television’s return
path to allow viewers to access ‘microsites’.
These are similar to websites. They potentially
overcome some of the limitations of TV advertising
– the inability to offer detail, difficulties
in measuring the success of the campaign and
the lack of opportunity to collect information
about viewers. The most successful interactive
adverts have included offers like the chance to
book a test drive for a new car. The initial buzz
of enthusiasm for this technology has given
way to disappointment about its effectiveness,
but these are early days and the prospect
of adding to the capabilities of the most
powerful medium could be very attractive to
PR professionals.
The internet is certainly having a growing
impact and is becoming ubiquitous in work
and education. The online advertising agency
i-level say the internet’s share of all media
consumption by the average adult in the
United Kingdom is about 7 per cent – impressive
for such a young medium. 15 It will certainly
become more relied upon as an
information source, but whether that means
most people will simply go to the same mainstream
media online rather than offline is a
moot point: whether the balance of power
between individuals and institutions will
change significantly is dependent as much on
economics and wider social change as on
technology. It also depends on human nature
– do we have a limitless capacity for interaction,
choice and finding out for ourselves, or
do most of us, most of the time, want the
sort of entertainment which currently dominates
the TV schedules The growth of the
internet and the gradual increase in multi-
© 2004 Sandra Oliver for editorial matter and selection;
individual chapters, the contributors