John Rich

Articles by John All articles by John

• The End -- And Beginning -- Of The World As We Know It: Why VR Is The New Media in MediaDailyNews on 01/06/2017
  

  Virtual Reality (VR) is the most powerful medium ever created. Its ability to invent new worlds, create novel experiences and induce deep empathy exposes and transports us to circumstances and places once unimaginable. Through the immersive lens of VR technology, we can explore and experience other countries and cultures, pilot spacecraft through the far reaches of the universe and even face and overcome our fears, phobias and biases. VR gives us mere humans superpowers, ultimately transforming us into the gods of new virtual worlds.

• As Marketers Chase Millennials, Millennials Reshape Marketing in Engage:Millennials on 10/16/2015
  

  At this point, the laser-like marketing focus on millennials is a given. And when it comes to connecting with millennials, there's no media like digital mobile media. With the precipitous decline in traditional media consumption and the issues plaguing the desktop Web - from ad fraud to ad blocking - mobile is seen as the millennial marketing promise land, where ads roamed free.

• Millennials Lead The Uber-sumer Movement in Engage:Millennials on 11/21/2014
  

  Generation Y has led many movements since coming of age, and for marketers, one of the most powerful movements Gen Y leads is the evolution of the uber-consumer. Through technological adoption, cultural shifts, embedded social networks and the overall size of the demographic, this "uber-sumer" is wresting control from brands to dictate the how, when and where of the marketplace. The rapid pace of innovation in today's world means that brands are often playing catch-up with these tech-savvy and ultra-connected consumers, and brands are often caught unawares of business- and industry-altering changes.

Comments by John All comments by John

• The End -- And Beginning -- Of The World As We Know It: Why VR Is The New Media by Jerry Hudson and John Rich (MediaDailyNews on 01/06/2017)
  

  Hi Ed, and thanks for your thoughtful comments.   A more relevant framework for adoption would be from the date a consumer product is first introduced. For TV, that would be 1928 (https://goo.gl/Mf1c7i), when both the hardware (and by necessity) the first TV station, W3XK, went live. Following that logic, VR’s first consumer launch was in 1995, when the Nintendo Virtual Boy (https://goo.gl/CNd7df) hit the shelves. In both cases, the early versions failed, and unsurprisingly, that failure can be attributed to the poor experience that the technology delivered. What’s inarguable is that the speed of technological adoption — including the cycles of failure and success — is accelerating. An excellent visualization of this is the 100-year march of technology graph from the Atlantic (https://goo.gl/iulm1A).   Even more important than the speed of adoption is the scale of adoption. Earlier technologies like TV (https://goo.gl/1SCbp2) were often adopted on a country-by-country basis, where current technologies are often adopted on a global scale.   My apologies for the long-winded description of adoption speed and scale, but I wanted to create a framework to address what I believe is the real — and important — point you’re making, which is that technology adoption isn’t as important as content development and access. On this point, we agree. The same forces that will exponentially improve the hardware will also drive a VR content explosion of unprecedented proportions. Not only are the tools to make VR content becoming faster, cheaper and easier to use, but the ability to distribute it is becoming almost frictionless. Compare all the global VR content distribution platforms already in place (e.g., Apple App Store, STEAM, Oculus Store, Google Play and Google Daydream) to the early days of TV, where we only had a handful of broadcast stations and few channels.   VR’s ubiquitous influence and reach is also more impressive than TV’s, which despite its presence on various channels and devices, is still focused on news and entertainment. We believe that VR will transform everything from how we educate to how we work and socialize (a big part of Facebook’s VR dream). More use cases will engage more content creators, whose knowledge and skills will often be interchangeable between content types. All these factors combined create a multiplier effect that we believe will take many by surprise.   Thanks again for your comments.   John Rich

• Kick(start)ed In The Gut by Bob Garfield (Garfield at Large on 10/13/2014)
  

  As they say, "Humiliation is mother of invention" (or something along those lines.) Anyway, your not best seller The Chaos Scenario was transformative for me. In 2009 after 20 years in advertising I thought I was pretty much alone in seeing the impending unraveling of the mass media, mass advertising system but The Chaos Scenario podcast and book kept me off of the ledge. Sure, it took 5 years but pretty well everything predicted is well underway. So a tip of the chapeau from moi and you have one more supporter for The Genius Dialogues (you're up to $4,092 btw.) Cheers, John Rich

About Edit

You haven't told us anything about yourself! Surely you've got something to say. Tell us a little something.