Paul Douglas, the serial entrepreneur and broadcast meteorologist behind Weather Nation, spoke this morning at Lurie Besikof Lapidus, LLP, this morning as the first in a new ROI Leader Forum. Paul’s topic was “Amish Doppler: Reinventing news, weather and advertising for a world of personalized, always-on, instant gratification.”

Needless to say there were a lot of marketing people in the audience (myself included) hoping to catch a glimpse into Paul’s crystal ball. Okay, I admit it. You know that Intel commercial, “our rock stars aren’t like your rock stars”? For serial entrepreneurs, Paul is a Rock Star. Charming and self-deprecating, yes, but still a rock star.

Paul gave a little history about himself. The part I found fascinating was that he paid his way through Penn State by doing radio broadcasts of the weather for 11 different radio stations from his dorm room closet. He would rig a microphone to his phone line and hide in the closet so he didn’t wake his roomate. Each radio station paid him a few hundred dollars a month for the service. He was already on his way to being a serial entrepreneur.

While it was interesting to hear how he put together his businesses and how he learned that recurring fees was a much better business model than individual sales, what I found most illuminating was his perception of where “infotainment” and marketing are headed.

My biggest take was that marketers have always perceived themselves as a “business service” helping companies push their products out to the public. Now, marketers need to rethink their business model to see themselves as a ”consumer service,” helping consumers choose what products and services they are willing to accept advertising about.

His premise was based on the idea that consumers are no longer willing to accept advertising in exchange for information. on the Internet, they expect everything to be free. Including free of ads, banner ads, video ads or any other “intrusive” broadcast-style advertising. People can now pick and choose their content, create their own “page” on Google and Yahoo and they expect the same ability with advertising.

Consumers don’t necessarily want to end advertising. They just want to be able to say, “this is what I’m interested in. This is the content I want to see and these are the subjects I’m willing to accept advertising about.” Paul also brought up that maybe people should be able to dictate whether they want serious and informative commercials or whether they only want funny ads.

Paul has a new business called Singular Logic that is going to try and capitalize on this idea. Could be “the big one” and I’m going to be watching…

PS “Amish Doppler” is a window…

PSS I ran into Harold Gruesner and Roshini Rajkumar while I was there. Felt like old home week…

HackingEthics

Originally posted 2009-09-11 10:52:16. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

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