• by Graeme Hutton , Op-Ed Contributor, April 2, 2008

Soon after the American Revolution, the British found themselves embroiled in another battle, this time in their own backyard, facing a workers' backlash to the Industrial Revolution. While America had Paul Revere, late 18th-century England had the fabled grassroots figure, Ned Ludd.

Ludd, a farmworker at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, became alarmed at the rapid adoption of textile machinery. He was so greatly distressed about how these new machines were replacing manual jobs that he urged his coworkers to set about destroying all the textile machines they could, a criminal act punishable by death at the time.

Ludd's followers later became notorious, rioting across the country in their quest to destroy machinery. They became known as Luddites, a moniker which today refers to anyone who stiffly resists advances in technology.
To anyone in the United States who is proud of our technological communications advances, it might come as a surprise to learn that the u.s. consumer, in one respect, is quite a Luddite compared with consumers in the rest of the world.

The primary driver behind the rise of social media is often seen as the new technologies that enable consumers to talk with each other. Arguably, the rise of social media has been caused by the synthesis of two opposing forces: the rise of personal communications technologies colliding with increasing consumer resistance to mass media conventions.

Our qualitative research on ad avoiders, who are quintessential resisters to mass media conventions, shows they are typically impatient with predictable, over-simplified ad norms, more critical of what is for me/not for me in commercial communications, yet, paradoxically, they can exhibit a well-articulated appreciation of why a good ad is 'cool.'

Social media covers a panoply of manifestations: from blogging and social networks to avatars in virtual worlds. Globally, Universal McCann has been tracking 14 of these platforms on a quantitative basis using a sample of 10,000 across 20 countries. The three most popular forms in terms of incidence in the last six months are: reading blogs, instant messaging and watching video clips.

In the United States, 33 percent of the total adult population has read a blog in the last six months. Conversely that means, by flipping that number on its head, that 67 percent have not read a blog in the last six months. And this observation hints at the wide variation in people's usage and concept of social media: It is a hydra-headed beast that cannot be readily pigeonholed into one convenient short-hand description.

Across the main types of social media we track, the United States is leading the world in watching videos and maintaining a profile on a social network. So it was quite a revelation to see the United States as a Luddite when it comes to mobile. The cell phone should be the ultimate social media tool. Besides talking with it, you can text, connect it to your pc for a host of portable information, surf the Web, even transact with it. But among regular Internet users, we found that:

• Only 64 percent had sent an SMS text, compared with a global average of 87 percent; the average u.s. user sent 39 texts a month, compared with 93 globally.
• Internet usage on a mobile phone was above the average, typically 12 visits a month, but it is still a long way behind the leading market, Japan, where users went online 40 times a month. Adoption of multimedia services reached significant penetration, although still lower than the average. Fifty-two percent of Americans had taken a photo versus 80 percent globally; 22 percent had recorded a video versus 62 percent globally; and 24 percent had downloaded a game versus 31 percent globally.

Paradoxically, this Luddite-consumer attitude represents a huge opportunity for marketers. Imagine if the figures above on cell phone usage instead applied to China or India. Every global telecom company would be clamoring to invest and exploit the opportunity to the fullest. In the United States, development of mobile represents an enormous opportunity - as if the World Wide Web was about to be rediscovered all over again.
Mobile should herald a major second online communications era that can boost U.S. MarCom0.s opportunities to new and exciting heights. Mobile is coming ... are you ready for the revolution?

Graeme Hutton is senior vice president and director of consumer insights at Universal McCann. (graeme.hutton@universalmccann.com)