The future of marketing and commerce is megabrands, product innovation and media as a feature, says this month’s Signal Conversation guest, Scott Galloway. “I see the advertising industrial complex collapsing and we’re moving to a smaller and smaller number of megabrands that control aspects of our life,” he said. “You’ll have the upstarts that will do cool stuff, but I think we’re moving to a consolidation phase around the companies with the most scale.”
What does this mean for the current brand leaders? “The sun has passed mid-day on brand,” he said. “We’re moving out of the brand era into the innovation era that’s more about product differentiation that’s unlocked through digital.”
In this wide-ranging conversation with John Battelle, Galloway, a serial entrepreneur, NYU professor and host on the podcasts “The Prof G Show” and “Pivot,” talked about the future of TikTok, the end of traditional advertising, why big tech hasn’t been broken up, companies moving from one-off sales to subscription models, and the problem of choice for consumers. “I think that consumers don’t want choice, they want more confidence in choices,” he said.
Certainly, choice has proliferated in over the top streaming services, an increasingly crowded field made up of pure-plays and media industry incumbents, from Netflix to Disney (and the new Peacock).
“The entire media landscape is in the midst of being featurized,” he said. “The biggest spenders in original scripted television aren’t there to build media businesses, they’re there to increase the NPS score of Amazon Prime or your handheld. Media is now the feature, it’s no longer the business itself.” And when it comes to who will win the streaming wars, Disney, he says, is the only incumbent that has put up a fair fight against the pure-plays.
Watch the video here:
