Why Content Is The New Currency

[Commentary] These news items recently caught our attention: P&G shifting money from marketing to social media. And GM walking away from advertising on Facebook. Question: Are these events contradictory or complementary?

The answer is that they are complementary. If you answered otherwise, you need to go back and review the last 15 years of digital evolution. If you got the answer correct, then what are you doing about it? Please understand that the story here is not the demise of advertising. Rather, it's the rise of content. While GM may be cutting the $10 million it spends on Facebook ads, it has no inclination to cut the $30 million it spends annually to create content for Facebook. That's because unlike the advertising, the content is delivering results. Across the digital world marketers are learning the same lesson -- advertising, and more significantly the marketing funnel as we have known it, are becoming ineffective tools for influencing how consumers move to purchase. Consumers are no longer willing to be shoved down the path to purchase, like meat being pushed through a grinder. [Copilevitz is a digital strategist at IQ]