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- Moreover, what I found fascinating was,
Australians are no longer interested
in websites and home computers,
but they have moved their focus entirely to the cell phone,
or as they call it, the mobile.
Presenter after presenter reminded us
of the mobile's nascent power,
how, according to a recent survey by Mercedes-Benz,
the mobile has now replaced the automobile
as the single most important purchase a consumer makes
to signify their social status,
which is--if you're a car manufacturer,
you'd better find that terrifying,
how, according to consumer behavior,
90% of consumers take their cell phone to them--
with them to the toilet.
[laughter]
These get better.
13% see it as their best friend.
22% of Spanish men will regularly interrupt sex
to take a cell phone call.
[laughter]
And interestingly enough,
the single greatest usage of time and place
for the cell phone to explore the internet--
and more than 49% of Australians use the cell phone
as their primary means of going online,
not their desktop--
the primary use is after 9:00 p.m. at home.
People don't go home and log on to their computers anymore.
They go home, and they turn on their mobiles.
And woe to us all if we continue to plan our websites,
our marketing materials, and our media strategies
for the 17-inch computer monitor and not for the PDA screen.
This new constant social interfacing
is word of mouth on steroids,
and it's a power that can elevate us
or, if ignored, it's gonna kill us.
Here are more stats I love.
In a time when 71% of consumers believe a peer
based on word of mouth
and only 39% believe a newspaper,
in a time when 87% will trust
a friend's opinions over a critic's
and 84% will trust any user review over any critic
and when a recent analysis of 1,000 ticket buyers
at a major New York presenter show that of the 1,000,
the number of people that bought a ticket because of a review
or reading the article in the paper
was 4 people out of the 1,000--
not 4%; 4 people out of 1,000--
the world has changed while all too often,
we continue to focus our own strategies on print,
on newspapers, and in gatherings behind closed doors
to wail about the power of the critics to undo us all.
We've got to engage in this world,
this mobile world,
and if we have any prayer
of skating to where the puck will be,
we have to require every staff member,
ourselves included, regardless of generation,
to spend at least three hours of work time online every week
going into new websites, investigating blogs,
joining social networks, visiting Second Life,
going to Facebook, et cetera,
learning in our bones how this world works,
mastering the critical online tools
to lead people to the sites
where they will see our critical tools onsite.
I got to say,
this involves strategic planning and execution.
The new generation gap is not about age.
It's about the difference between the digital natives,
as they're called,
natives who expect and demand interactivity,
participation, access, and engagement,
and the digital immigrants, which is who I am,
many of whom want to just consume and not to participate
and who are the bulk of many of our current audiences.
Indeed, your audience might be dominated by immigrants
who simply want to show up for the performance, listen,
and go home.
They may love the concert format as we've known it,
the purity and simplicity of chamber musicians
adorned only by a cluster on the stage
engaged in collaborative expression.
It nourishes them.
That's why they're there.
They may resent the intrusion of technology
into the performance space
and resist even conductors who talk from the podium.
But for every devotee of that format,
there are dozens if not hundreds of young people,
young people who expect freedom of choice,
customization, collaboration, and interactivity
and who would say, as one recently said to me,
you know, sitting in the dark for two hours,
unable to communicate with my friends through speech
or through technology is not my idea of a good time.
In light of their growing numbers
and recognizing that even the over 50s,
of which I am, shop online--
we now check Facebook before email,
and we struggle with our own shortening attention spans--
we can no longer take
our traditional way of behavior for granted.
What we play, exhibit, or produce;
where, when, and with whom;
what we do and do not do beside play, exhibit, or produce:
these are our decisions,
and they lie strategically at the heart of everything we do
and every engagement
and must be leveraged to embody our deepest values.
To ignore this as a choice is simply to consign our destiny
and be the victim of it.
To manipulate and guide those choices
is to be the master of our own future.
Indeed, the single greatest challenge everyone faces is,
how is it that we manage the perilous equation:
managing short-term survival
while continuing to move to long-term transformation.
That's the conundrum of the present:
short-term survival
while working for long-term transformation.