The Internet's New Application

Ira Carlin, worldwide media director of the world's largest advertising agency, McCann Erickson, is quite candid about using fear to sell his message about the communications revolution.

One prediction shows that 55 percent of advertising by volume will he carried on the Internet by 2005. Consumers will have control and choice of communication; they will also have control over what advertisements they watch, and how. But that will only apply to the "information enabled", says Carlin. "There'll he an upstairs-downstairs schism ... The widening gap between the information enabled and information disabled is going to be a greater social problem than any seemingly social problem we've ever had in the past, including racial and economic problems."

"Look at what is already happening," Carlin says. Living in Manhattan, he can choose the way he receives his daily news. He can open his front door and pick up his own personal copy of the New York Times. He can tune to the radio station of the New York Times, WOXR, and listen to the same news. "Or I can simply click into newyorktimes.com on the Internet and get the print electronically; or hear the audio files or see the video that the New York Times stringers have supplied, through my computer. It's the same news, but I choose the media modality.

By June 1997, nearly 400 channels of cable television were available in the U.S.. In the near future, thanks to revolutionary developments in computer technology, computer users will be able to access those channels via their computer screens. "How can anyone fill 400 channels of television?" asks Carlin. He answers himself promptly: "Customized programming, that's how." Giant multinational food company Nestle is already setting up a cable channel showing cooking programs based on its products.

"Businesses will need to cross-market in the fixture," Carlin says. So Nestle might still run its popular television ad about a couple who fall in love over a cup of Nescafe coffee, "but they would also produce a CD of all the love songs the couple would listen to, and a novelization of their relationship." Teenage product ads might have an associated video game. And successful businesses in the future, Carlin says, will draw customers into their own loyal "family" by talking to them directly and providing services via the Internet.

The "roughly right" approach to targeting an audience is not good enough in today's electronic age, Carlin says. "But, quite frankly, with the right message and the right modality and the right timing, we can end up selling the consumer anything, anywhere, anytime." Now are you scared?