Are Undifferentiated Media Brands Useless? The Law Says “Yes”

In Norbert Weiner’s landmark 1950 book, The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society, he shares a model for the future of communications and media that is, in fact, applicable today. “Entropy,” he theorizes, “is the original sin.” It’s a tendency in the universe toward the loss of differentiation, and a failure to differentiate among multiple choices leads to chaos. To Weiner, chaos means complete stasis, where everything is so balanced that there is no differentiation of energy and effort, resulting in complete “uselessness, thus creating stasis and chaos.” Entropy is the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

Based on results from The Myers Report Media Brand Equity Study on 100 media brands — conducted among more than 1,200 advertisers, agency professionals, and consumers — uselessness is creeping into the industry. According to the study, more than 30 leading media content programmers and publishers are already useless, with more than 50 percent of respondents saying they lack any clear distinctiveness from other media brands.

The perceived distinctiveness of leading media is diminishing, with hundreds, if not thousands, of non-differentiated media brands battling for attention and ad dollars in a highly competitive marketplace — each with little defined value or purpose beyond cost-efficiency. Applying cybernetics to the media and communications industry, Weiner explains that “media distribution technologies and media content in a machine-dependent world are destined to become undifferentiated. The [Second] Law of Thermodynamics (entropy) drives chaos, and, ultimately, more and more messages and distribution platforms become useless.”

Fear and Bureaucracies Are Enemies of Growth

Weiner’s cybernetics model argues that knowledge and education, along with the systems to take action on that knowledge, are at the core of growth and success: “Information and feedback are all we have to resist entropy.” Companies, organizations, and individuals that do not access and act on marketplace intelligence and feedback to retain clear differentiation are doomed to move progressively toward a lack of relevance.

“Knowledge is what you act upon to make adjustments to your situation. Fear,” he argues, “is a reason for not using information. Bureaucracy is another reason.” In bureaucracies, he says, “when there is no feedback or mechanism to turn feedback into action for change, entropy sets in.” The media and advertising industry ranks toward the bottom among 15 major industries for gathering market feedback and many in the industry have little structure for converting market intelligence into B2B strategies.

Is the lack of perceived differentiation among advertising decision-makers and influencers a canary in the coal mine? Is their usefulness so limited that agencies will restrict their inclusion in media planning consideration sets? In the increasingly competitive, chaotic, and highly commoditized advertising marketplace, do more and more media brands get pushed toward “free” and either relaunch or disappear altogether. Weiner and the Second Law of Thermodynamics would argue that the conclusion is inevitable. The Myers Report market intelligence and MediaVillage B2B solutions are proven weapons against the bureaucracy and fear of change that are the enemies of growth and success.

About Author

Jack Myers is recognized globally for his four decades of leadership in marketing, media and entertainment. As an educator, analyst, author, and business builder.

Appeared first in MediaVillage