Are you pushing or pulling?

Most connections are analogous to two people connected to a rope. We get farther, and are more effective, by pulling than by pushing. Magazines and information suppliers have made a living on pushing the rope. They pushed to us what they thought, surveys aside, we wished to read. Google changed the rope. The company's notion was - here is a bunch of information, pull down what you want. And we pulled to the extent that Google is now a company valued at a few hundred billion dollars. And all the while the pushers', e.g New York Times and numerous others, revenue declined. And the pusher's have been on a downhill slide ever since.

The notion of pushing and pulling is not new. I see it in my kids, what ever I push on them, such as unrequested advice, falls on deaf ears. On the other hand, if I can stomach the patience to wait until they ask for advice, if ever, then they pull advice from me and the pull always trumps the push. Information suppliers, like newspapers etc., still have not got the technology message. It is unlikely they ever will. Why not? Because for years they believed they knew what the consumer wanted. They made all the content decisions. Not any more.  Information suppliers have to turn their business content supply model upside down, instead of content push they must rely on content pull by the consumer.

It is not about simply morphing the old model to a web based on-line version. It is about addressing an information pull model. I suspect if I asked the Kansas City Star if they understand this model distinction, they would reply - "that is what we are doing." The KCS newspaper is shrinking to a physical delivery vehicle for automobile ads. Historically, when a firm's sales or profit margins decrease, advertising is the first item slashed.

In the not too distant future, the automobile dealers will realize that their advertising dollars,  funneled to them by the manufacturers, is not contributing to car sales, then they will stop local advertising. At that junction, KCS will only have ads for bread, milk and meat from the local super markets. And that has a finite time limit too. The super markets have been collecting our email addresses for years. Many of these leading firms are already letting us pull down the specials we want to hear about. When I pull it, I buy it. When it is pushed to me, I resist.

I have used the KCS as an example, but I am sure you can think of many more information suppliers that refuse to adopt the new pull model over the historical push model and will inevitably join the cemetery filled with fax machines, teletypes and super 8 recorders.

In your personal and business life, pull that rope.

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