Z.E.R.O.: Zero Paid Media as the New Marketing Model

CHAPTER19

From Campaigns to Commitments to Ecosystems

Let me start right off the bat¹ with a mea culpa as it relates to the four buzzwords or clichés that are anywhere on the continuum of painful to putrid: big data, native advertising, transmedia, and ecosystem.

Now that I've got that out there, let me concede in the spirit of “If you can't beat 'em, join 'em” that I've reconciled myself internally to say big data and ecosystem without using air quotes or wincing. I'm even coming around to the term native advertising' although I still think that this is nothing more than classic branded content integration—even advertorial, if you think about it.

As far as transmedia is concerned, you can forget about it. I'm just not going there, although I'm all for gender equality among vampires. According to Wikipedia, this is the definition of an ecosystem:

An ecosystem is a community of living organisms (plants, animals and microbes) in conjunction with the nonliving components of their environment (things like air, water and mineral soil), interacting as a system. . . . As ecosystems are defined by the network of interactions among organisms, and between organisms and their environment, they can come in any size but usually encompass specific, limited spaces (although some scientists say that the entire planet is an ecosystem).

Interestingly enough, the entry begins with a small caveat: For the business metaphor, see “Business ecosystem.” This entry cites James Moore as having first introduced ...