0xR

What media is now.

Medium is Latin for the middle: the thing that carries a message from whoever made it to whoever receives it. Media is the plural.

  1. 01

    Media is everything
    that carries your story to a person.

    Your brand, your films, your words and the product itself. All four carry it, so all four are media.

  2. 02

    Where the idea came from

    until 2005

    Old media

    Your story travelled on channels somebody else owned. You pitched a journalist and waited.

    2005

    Every company a media company

    Tom Foremski named it in 2005. Companies stopped pitching and started publishing on channels they owned.

  3. 03

    Why every company, and why now

    Whatever you make, somebody else can make it too. The tools are rented by the month, the factory takes anyone’s order, and your competitor is calling the same model you are.

    When was the last time you tried something completely different from the rest? You can probably name one. And soon enough somebody copies it, then somebody copies the copy, and the thing that felt different is on every menu.

    Everything you sell is becoming a commodity.
    The story is the only part you still own.

    And a story does not live on one page of a website. It arrives through the brand, the films, the words and the product in someone’s hands. That is the new part: all four surfaces, run as one operation. Feeding them used to take a room full of people, which is why only the funded few ever did it.

If you want to work on that story,
here is what my agents and I do.

now

Direction

What the story is, and what is worth making. what the company is / who it is for / what it is up against / what gets made this month / what gets killed

This part is me.

now

Production

The story, made every week. brand identity / film / art direction / copy and content / product design / the go-to-market plan

Six agents produce it, one per craft. Meet the crew

next

Distribution

The story, sent out every day.

The plan for it is made today, under production. Putting it out is still me, by hand. The agents that would do that do not exist yet, and when they do, the studio that makes the story also moves it.