• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, October 1, 2014

That’s what Kavita Vazirani, senior vice president-media strategy & sciences at Comcast Cable, suggested we are currently in.

The reason: The medium is no longer the message, you are.

“I think audience targeting is something that has existed as long as I’ve been in media,” she said during the opening panel discussion at OMMA Audience Targeting in New York. “What’s changed is that the consumers have become a form of media.”

By that, I think she meant something more than the obvious answer -- that consumers using social media or blogging user-generated content or uploading video, etc. -- have turned consumers into a form of media. I think she meant something far more profound, maybe a recognition that for all the intentions of Madison Avenue and Big Media, consumers are the ultimate filters of how they consume media. The only difference now, is that consumers have the ability to disseminate media too.

“How do we now look at the consumers as one form of media that will impact how they will buy our products,” she queried, adding, “How they will talk about our products?”

Later, she raised an even more profound, and somewhat ironic observation, suggesting that the classic media planning model should be reversed: “Should we start [with the consumer] and work our way up from there.”