In our last post we had an extract from an interview with musician/entrepreneur/geek Will.I.Am in Wired magazine. It was such a good interview that we thought we’d share another of his comments with you:

i noticed last february at a photoshoot that a picture taken with an iphone was seen by more people than the photography that cost $300,000. if we really adapted to today’s behaviour, you’d just shoot on your iphone and send it off to millions of people. but brands don’t want to do that, because their big budgets lead them to use yesterday’s equipment

We have a slightly different spin on this. One of the reasons that some companies are not embracing the new ways of interacting with the audiences that they ought to be talking to, is that they don’t trust the technology. And the reason they don’t trust it is because it is now. But that is the way of the world – there will always be change and evolution and only those who keep up will thrive.

At the same time, there are companies and individuals invested in trying to undermine the new ways of doing things – printers with millions of pounds invested in huge printing presses designed to produce millions of copies of one thing. Photographers with masses of highly expensive and immobile kit who want days to set up photoshoots in exotic locations. Magazine publishers with teams of journalists and contracts with the aforementioned printers. Television companies with studios and editing suites and script-writers, etc.

How do these companies react when anyone with a smartphone can take a picture, edit it onscreen and post it to globally significant social media networks in seconds?

Certainly the quality of a snap on a smart-phone is not very good. The photo or video is not going to be well set-up, produced or edited. But it is fast. And that sort of instantaneous outreach is what the future of media will be all about. Magazines and televisions and movies will all still exist. But they no longer have a monopoly. There is a new way for people to communicate with one another and they really are using it right now. And if you want your brand to communicate with your audience, then using the same media that they are seems like the right idea. As Will.I.Am says:

when everybody realises what’s possible, the pillars that are holding up the building collapse