Historically, marketing was often seen as an internal department of a traditional company that helps position a product or a service in the market by crafting a story and placing ads in various media (TV, magazines, radio). Modern always-online devices make the technology much more personal and erase many boundaries between companies and customers.
The authors say that a shift is happening from renting access to an audience of interest to owning distribution to your audience and creating valuable content for it. According to the authors, the shift is so strong that the difference between a media company and a traditional product company is disappearing altogether. Instead, the marketing department should become a media department that owns access to its company’s audience and creates content that the audience is willing to pay for, so much so that it can work at breaking even or even be profitable.
To quote the authors:
The new media business model and the new marketing business model are exactly the same.
Comment
That’s the whole book. It contains many examples and a few tactics and channels (think social media), but the main point is the note above. The book is not bad, but it should have been an article.