"New Media and the New Consumer" by Ken Bernhardt Regents' Professor of Marketing and Assistant Dean for Corporate Relations  Robinson College of Business, Georgia State University Atlanta Business Chronicle - July 28, 2006 I have recently conducted focus groups with young entrepreneurs and college students concerning their use of different communications tools. Whether or not you are a business to consumer or a business to business marketer, I am convinced your customers' behaviors and habits are changing.  As a result, you will need to change the way you communicate or your business will die a slow death.  Why do I say a slow death?  It seems that recent research has demonstrated that most people overestimate the speed of change in the marketplace and underestimate the significance of the changes taking place.  Markets and consumer behavior don't change overnight, but over time the changes can be dramatic.  Sometimes the slower pace of the changes lulls marketers into thinking everything is the same and that they don't have to change the way they market their products and services.  With respect to communicating with your target markets, nothing could be further from the truth.  Let's look at how college students and younger entrepreneurs use media.  Almost none look at daily newspapers, something that is surprising to me, who faithfully and thoroughly reads 3 newspapers each day.  How do they keep up with what is happening in the world?  They live on the Internet and get their news there.  What do they see as the advantages? They get the information for free (newspapers cost money for information I can get elsewhere), when and where they want to get it.  They can pick and choose what stories they want to see, making it more efficient for them, and they can find the information they want with just a couple of clicks.  The information is extremely current, something not true with printed material.  As an added bonus, they don't get dirty newsprint on their hands.  They are listening to less and less radio.  What's wrong with radio?  First of all, you have to listen to what someone else has selected for you. With an iPod or other MP3 player, you can listen to what you want to when you want to listen to it.  You can pick the songs you want in the order you want to hear them.  An added benefit is that there is no advertising, although young people avoid the advertising on radio anyhow, courtesy of the ability to hit a button switch to another station (which they all do).  It is no wonder that over 100 million iPods have been sold.  Satellite radio is another fast growing alternative that offers the ability to listen to a wide variety of music, sports, or talk radio, all ad-free.  Young people don't watch much television, and when they do they often are multi-tasking.  When commercials come on the air, thanks to the remote control, they are off to another channel or more accurately, off to numerous other channels.  Sales of TIVO and Digital Video Recorders (DVR's) are projected to increase dramatically in the next 3 to 4 years, making it even easier to avoid commercial messages.  Recent changes in technology are now allowing consumers (especially younger ones) to download TV shows into their iPods or cell phones.  Again, this will enable them to watch what they want, when they want, with the added advantages of being able to watch it wherever they are and to pause it when they want to. So what are the implications of all these changes in media habits?  It is clear that more and more consumers will be harder and harder to reach with commercial messages.  The world has changed from one where consumers passively receive information from marketers to one where the consumer is in control.  They now want to get unbiased information and they want it when it is convenient for them.  One of the biggest complaints consumers have about advertising is that it "doesn't speak to what I want to buy."  Google and Yahoo have been phenomenally successful because they provide a mechanism to satisfy the need for relevant information when consumers want to buy.  They are transparent, so consumers can view paid advertising if they want that information.  There are now over 5 million personal blogs and 5 percent of Fortune 500 companies have created corporate blogs.  Yet a recent Harris Interactive study of Fortune 1000 senior executives found that only 30 percent understood the term "Internet blog."  On-line gaming, RSS feeds, podcasting, and text messaging are other fast growing communication tools that most business executives don't know anything about.  Perhaps the biggest change in media/communications habits is the advent of consumer "communities," of which My Space.com and Facebook.com (a similar site geared exclusively for college students) are two great examples.   My Space is the 7th most visited Internet site in the U.S., has over 50 million registered users, and is currently adding 6 million new visitors a month. These "social networking" sites enable consumers to connect with other people, friends and strangers alike, and share content.  Hollywood studios and auto companies have been the biggest users to date.  As Bob Dylan has said, "the times, they are a-changin'."  Are you changing with them?