The Conversation Economy As I See It

Still trying to parse the myriad of concepts thrown out at the DJ Spooky lecture ( and inspired by the great diagrams of David Armano) I started to scribble. I was trying to tie together the thoughts Paul presented with some of the stuff I’ve been reading about the “Conversation Economy”. The following diagram is what I came up with along with the help of the rest of Paragon and our friendly neighborhood futurist Frank Spencer.

Under the Monologue Advertising paradigm

• Advertisers set the tone and control the perception of their brand.
• Advertisers don’t need to be too engaged with consumers until there’s a crisis like a product recall or PR fiasco.
• There’s very little feedback from the consumers apart from satisfaction surveys, focus groups, maybe even a complaint letter here and there.

Conversation Advertising paradigm

• Advertisers set the tone, but are held accountable to their brand promises.With social media platforms + “sampling” tools the consumers have a louder voice. Smart advertisers listen and respond by adjusting business practices or services, while those who refuse to listen suffer the consequences at the hands of the Consumer DJs (e.g. this video created to comment on Sony’s brand decay that I found on David Airey’s blog)
• Smart Product Creators use the conversation to institute new more relevant products.
• Propaganda is less likely since there’s more self-regulated accountability. (e.g. Thieves are quickly outed, and ugliness, although unavoidable, is heavily frowned upon.)

I’m interested in hearing what other people think about this phenomenon, or if the diagram’s missing something.