• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, October 1, 2012

OMMA Global emcee Jeff Jarvis opened this year’s show with a pretty fundamental and important question: “What business are we in?”

The “we” is media and advertising organizations, of course, but Jarvis reminded us that we are no longer in the businesses we thought we were in. Instead of content, distribution and messaging, we are now in – drumroll please – “relationships.”

“I would ask what business we’re in, and I would say we’re in the relationship business,” Jarvis said, adding, “It’s a word we can throw around pretty easily.” Making the concept work, isn’t so easy, he said. Mainly because it requires a fundamental rethinking of business models, and reasons for businesses to exist.

For example, Jarvis said the wrong way to think is, “We have to have a tablet strategy.” Instead, he said, “You have to have a strategy about people. Knowing more about them, and what they want. And then of course you can serve them on any platform they want.”

Interestingly, I think that the smarter agencies and media companies get that. They call it “user experience,” or UX for short, and it’s all about understanding why people are somewhere, what they want, and how they want to experience it. Easier said than done.