Resetting Everything

Michael Hedges June 29, 2009 (follow on Twitter)

Great salesmen join the twin peaks of evangelism and hucksterism with a ray of pure love. We – mostly – don’t believe anything they say, but wow, they’re fun to hear. And we need them as much as they need to be needed.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer was named Media Person of the Year at the Cannes International Advertising Festival (IAF) (June 24). Every salesperson is a media person now. For the honor, Ballmer – also celebrating A Year Without Bill – spoke in clear voice to a standing-room-only crowd of advertising people.

He was not there just to cheer them up. This years’ Cannes gaggle was noticeably thinner, in most respects. Fewer awards – the fabled Cannes Lions – went to traditional media ads, a clear message that the digital future has arrived. Steve Ballmer was there to sell that future to the flag-bearers.

“We are delighted to honor Steve Ballmer,” said IAF CEO Philip Thomas, “a passionate and dynamic personality whose energetic leadership and vision over the years has made Microsoft into the global leading brand that has touched the lives of millions, and changed the face of worldwide communication.”

In his keynote address, Ballmer’s vision – and sales pitch – fit the room filled with Twittering ad people.

“There won’t be newspapers, magazines and TV programs,” he announced. “We can debate if that may be in one, two, five or ten years. All content consumed will be digital. There won’t be personal, social communications offline and separate. In ten years it will be online. Static content won’t cut it in the future.” CNN founder Ted Turner predicted, in 1981, newspapers would be gone within ten years. That was just months after Steve Ballmer joined Microsoft as business manager. In 2007 Ballmer famously laughed at Apple’s iPhone. Quite Nikita-esque, he also once said he’d ‘bury” Google.

Content, like economies, are being “reset,” a word he used repeatedly. "At the end of the day you can put a PC - some form of a PC - next to the TV or embedded in the TV - and we'll have to, as we're repackaging the Internet and the digital content for the phone,” he said working the pitch. “We're going to see content get repackaged and repurposed to really make sense of a TV-based experience.” Advertising people understand the value of repetition.

Microsoft makes most of its money selling software, as it has for a generation. Long on its agenda has been getting the PC into living rooms, where the ad money still lives. So far, that’s only succeeded for the XBox game console. “Five years ago, I'd have said we are mostly trying to do the offline world online,” he admitted.  Microsoft recently repackaged its search portal, for the 3rd or 4th time, calling it Bing.

“TV,” he said, “is probably where the development or the future of what's going to happen to interactive digital content is least clear.”

“All content needs to be relevant,” he said, moving toward the kill. “We’ll live in a world of - at least in the digital world - where people will pull what they want. They’re not going to get things pushed on to them. Not content, not advertising as a form of content, people are going to pull things that are relevant and all content will need to deal with a multi-device world. A world in which the phone, TV and PC – big, middle, and small screens - if you will - all play important roles in peoples’ lives.”

“We ought to be able to drive everybody to consume the communications and information - the information in their world – digitally,” he pleaded. “All information will be social, you'll expect to be able to collaborate and share thoughts, perspectives and interactions in any piece of content or any experience socially.”

The media battlefield is littered with the bruised and bloodied who tried to “drive” consumers one way or another. Social media’s most ardent fans speak lovingly about transactional and transient communications reflecting the spirit of the times. Others see a Hula-hoop; most people don’t ‘collaborate’ or ‘share,’ simply, for the moment, snapping up instances. That consumers’ follow sheepishly with proper training is the most fundamental principle new media is overturning. 

To the broader worry, Ballmer, ever the salesman, turned a lemon into lemonade.  “I don’t think we (in the United States) are in a recession,” he offered. “I think we have reset. We have reset and won’t rebound and re-grow. I’m sort of prepared for us to trundle along for a while…”.

"Ten years from now, will media spend be a higher, a lower, or a constant percentage of GDP?" he posed rhetorically. "I can't make a case for a higher percentage of GDP. I can make a case for consistent or lower percent of GDP."

Others speaking to the ad people followed the more conventional cyclical meme. Google’s CEO Erik Schmidt said it’s “reasonable to be optimistic. If people are concerned Americans will stop spending, you do not understand the American psyche. It shocked me that Americans started to save. My guess is that’s a temporary phenomenon.”

In his keynote, Ballmer finally got around to the crowd pleasing moment. Microsoft will be increasing its ad spending.

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