DIGITAL REVOLUTION

The internet has done it again! Another revolution, this time it’s not in the free speech zone of North America nor the liberal end of Europe, the most recent e-revolution has taken place on the dusty Arabian side of Africa.

The Egyptian revolution has been described by many as a landmark achievement, especially as no one ever predicted that a continent that has witnessed more dictatorship, repression and government’s corruption than any, would have its young people adopt such a bold stance while powered by a western technology that is claimed to be limited in penetration due to poverty and cost of infrastructural deployment. For me it is no less a miracle.

It would be good to note that this uprising has been staged at several occasions, and did record monumental failure at every attempt, because it lacked followership. The momentum only picked up when protesters resorted to their computer keyboard and handheld devices. The internet became the major accelerant of this cause. A nation that has been repressed for 30years, with so many lone voices scattered across the Nile, but with the power of technology was amplified and brought to the world. As much as I would agree that revolutions have happened even before the advent of the internet, to deny the power of the internet and other communication tools in transforming the social fabric of our global human community would be ridiculous.

Today we have seen people, whether they be consumers or citizens, become more and more independent, with power moving away from the center to the hands of common men, we’ve experienced protest spurred on virally by Twitter and Facebook even before any kind of leadership or revolutionary consent comes in place. This is just the beginning however as we do not know yet where this is leading to

But there are a few consideration that makes this phenomenal rather interesting for me, and especially if we must be arbiter of this movement that is changing the fabric of our own business as marketing people.

One of it, is the empowerment of these little voices that never echoed until they found their way to become tweets and status messages, they suddenly realized that freedom can only be made possible by the long tail effect of something as little as summarized words in 140 character.

This has dramatically upset the interrelationship between brands, consumers and the market. It’s no longer news that consumers now have a voice of their own and empowered by new media technology, brand reputation is no longer decided by the one way traditional advertising that makes the brand a dictator who decides what you call him, how you refer to him, respect him and even spend your money on him. Power has been largely democratized, and just like the Egyptians though heterogeneous in education, religion and cultures, today’s consumers with different needs and aspirations now have a platform that discovers them no matter where they are and showcases them to the much larger world.

Another point of interest is that today the price of freedom is free, contrary to popular opinion, Protesters in Egypt didn’t have to buy their freedom from the three decade repression; all they did was to latch on to today’s pricing model.

Chris Anderson, whose new book “Free” explores this in detail. Those who understand the new free will command tomorrow’s markets and disrupt today’s. In a digitalized economy, the Egyptian youths just like today’s consumers paid near zero-price to obtain their sovereignty. The access to Twitter, Facebook and YouTube was at no cost, the cost of production was infinitesimal, Wael Ghonim who is credited to have championed the revolution online, only had to have a laptop and an access to the internet to organize the January 25^th protest, protesters made videos of pro-government violence via their mobile devices and uploaded to YouTube in no time. The world had access to endless information that is accurate and real time.

The height of this collaborative support for the Egyptian movement cannot be over-emphasized, but the learning gives us a reason to re-examine our role as managers of brands. Truly the power of the people is much more powerful than the people in power, the relationship between brand owners and consumers needs to move from fear to faith, there has to be a conscious believe for and in the people, the “Mubarak attitude” cannot thrive in this century, too many factors are against it, this is a different tribe of consumers, a tribe with different niche of voices, and no matter how heterogeneous they are, they all own a common platform that amplifies their power to a tipping point. The pricing model has also changed, the tools of production has been democratized and at no cost consumers can now re-write the message. The message is theirs and the medium also.