I remember as a child glancing with a little wonder and just a touch of disgust at the Dick Tracy comic strip in what we used to call “The Funny Papers.” Comics were an entertainment anchor for young people in those days, long before video games, Facebook and texting came along to abduct the attention span of children whose parents worked non-stop and were too exhausted to kick the kids outside to play. (And, yes, I fit in to that category now, too.) Dick Tracy was, to me anyway, a relatively boring comic strip, with nowhere near the entertainment value of Blondie,  Archie or The Family Circus. There seemed to be a convoluted story involved in Dick Tracy’s world that was way too serious and required a lot more attention than me, as an 11-year-old girl, was willing to spend on a newspaper.  So I didn’t pay it much heed. Other than to notice that Dick Tracy communicated with his boss through a watch-like gizmo that allowed them to see each other and talk to each other.

That was pretty cool.

It was an unthinkable gadget at the time and so ahead of its time that nobody thought it would ever actually be a possibility. This was long before cell phones arrived on the planet and, truth to tell, even long before fax machines and microwave ovens came along to give us the illusion that we were on the forefront of a technological “wave of the future.” A watch that allowed you to see someone? No way!

We might look at Dick Tracy’s watch today and think “Oh, of course, Skype on a watch. Duuh. At some point, people are going to look at today’s iWatches and think “how quaint, that was just before everybody started getting _________es that __________.”

The Implications of Content Marketing

The point is, it’s almost impossible to predict where digital marketing is headed and, indeed, what the implications for our social world are going to be. Anything is possible. We’ve all heard that if you can imagine it, you can create it, and many people will be nodding their heads in agreement as they think of the business they are nudging forward so ferociously into a future they themselves can’t quite picture. The future is anybody’s guess. And I think the important thing is not so much to be able to predict the future, as it is to be ready to roll with it.

Business people aren’t so much trying to “keep up with the Joneses” as they are trying to keep up with that demanding rascal, technology. Content marketing is already old news and if you haven’t started a content marketing program, you can no longer rush in to claim early adopter status. The good news, however, is that content marketing is still here and you can start taking advantage of the lessons the early adopters have learned along the way to keeping their businesses afloat. Is it time for you to take even a little bit of action to hook into a compelling future for your business?

Maybe you would like to book a conversation with me or a member of my team to find out more about how to generate more brand solidity with a content marketing program. If so, please don’t hesitate – the field is changing and waiting another year or two is only going to mean that you’ve lost traction. As they say, there’s no time like the present to get started!

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