Please sir, may I have some reality?

I thought I'd ascended the summit of fake, when I experienced the perpetual blue sky and gondolas inside the Venetian in Las Vegas.  But having been inside the world's most annoying hotel for two days, (should it take an hour to go from the morning meeting room, back to my room, pick up my suitcase, check out and return to my meeting room?)  I needed to breathe real air, so I skipped out on the various dinner offers after day 1 at the New Comms Forum to do a little shopping.  Finding "fresh air" in Las Vegas is a little like finding WMD's in Iraq for the Administration. You honestly believe if you really really want to find it bad enough, it will be there.  BIG MISTAKE.   First of all, many of the hotels are now non-smoking, which means everyone goes outside to smoke. Secondly, I timed my jaunt to coincide with the exploding volcano and "Sirens of TI" show at Treasure Island.  There I was, just minding my own business, and the fountain next to me exploded and started spewing fire.
The other problem is when the bellman says that the shopping center you're looking for is "just across the street"  -- that means you have to walk about a mile to find it, because the hotel is half a mile long and so is the path you have to take just to cross the street, and the only thing you can see is fountains, pirate ships and exploding volcanoes. 
Which brings me to the real point, which is how real is any of the stuff we learned today.  Don't get me wrong, I love learning about Second Life and PR 2.0 and all that good stuff and I dearly love reuniting with the friends I normally only see in cyberland, but I just have this nagging feeling  that we can do all the Powerpoints we want, and most of  America will still not get it.  There is no doubt that there is incredibly power in rich media like Second Life, and in the conversations that are going on, but judging from the questions from the audience, the people who make the decisions about where the money gets spent and how the company communicates are either scared silly by all this stuff, or see it all as just another way to scream messages at people. The more adventurous marketers will try this stuff, but chances are they won't get a good enough "ROI" to keep it going.   In fact, the lengthy discussion about "ROI" illustrated this perfectly.  The notion that money spent on blogging was better spent because it was cheaper than advertising, or because it might reduce your marketing costs seems to miss the point.  I'll admit that I can't calculate the exact value of a great conversation with a number of customers, but neither can I calculate the value of a telephone or a pair of trousers. More importantly, as Shel Israel would say, why would I bother?  I'm not quite ready to say we're doomed as an industry as Stumpette would have it, but  I do think we're on the verge of some pretty earth shattering changes that will not be comfortable for most of us.   But hey, as long as I'm on my way out of this town, I'm a happy camper.

 

Comments

[Toby]

Once again you confirm why I love you! You bring what to the surface what has been swirling about in my mind. Looking forward to a long conversation at BlogHer.

[MuchTooLonginPR]

I wonder too, sometimes, how much of America (never mind the rest of the world) will "get it." We had a great Social Media Club meeting in Phoenix last nite, but as I looked around the room, I thought - "I wonder how big or small the number is of Phoenicians who get it ("it" being the shift in communications from one-to-many to one-to-one) but just weren't able to make the meeting? When will social media be so intuitive and ubiquitous that we don't need a special club?"