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Many brands faltered when the world moved from the mass economy to the new economy. Demographic, technological and psychographic fundamentals changed, but companies continued on auto-pilot. They persisted in using mass-economy tactics like “positioning” when the foundation for success required building customer equity based on trust, loyalty and operational excellence. The now economy is just over the horizon. The fundamentals will change again. Brand titans will fall and upstarts will build new reigns. Companies unable to respond to the new dynamics of the now economy will lose market share, customers and their brand. Mass production, homogenous markets and broadcast marketing characterized the mass economy. Competitive advantage derived from scale and distribution. The new economy demonstrated the requirement to do business on customer terms by harnessing the capabilities of a relationship enterprise. Competitive advantage derived from a customer relationship and the flexibility to rapidly respond to changing requirements worldwide. Customer and organizational pressures drove an increased emphasis on accountability. The now economy, beginning around 2005, will arm the new economy with steroids. Armed with increasingly sophisticated technologies, markets and customers will be networked within a globalized, time-pressured world. Companies must start now to lay the groundwork for FusionBranding within this new intensity. Companies now need to start preparing for how ubiquitous wireless access, nanotechnology and other advances, dynamic global markets and new marketing vehicles like interactive television will affect FusionBrands. The now economy will be characterized by immediacy, personalization and reach. Immediacy will be accelerated by universal connectivity, thanks to wireless and specialized chips that can monitor and respond to requirements inside homes, businesses and even on our person. Such connectivity will raise expectations for responsiveness. If a company can tell me about specials as I pass its store, why can't it signal me as soon as my clothes have been dry cleaned? Delivery windows will have to shrink from days to hours, telephone hold times from minutes to seconds, and email responses from days to minutes. "Time" will become a bigger driver of value than "price." Meeting these increased expectations will require collaborative agility across the relationship enterprise. Currently, true personalization is limited by cost, time and technological capabilities. In most cases, it consists of choosing options like colors and fabrics. In the now economy, almost everything associated with an offering can be personalized. Cereal manufacturers will offer breakfasts with individualized tastes, tools will fit hands like a glove and even TV shows will allow viewers to follow plot lines along different tangents. Even a mass economy powerhouse like the auto industry is moving toward personalized vehicles. Personalization on customer terms will not only extend to color, shape, experience or other attributes but also to contact, communications and content. Thanks to such standards as XML, Web services will enable businesses and consumers to "assemble" service, production and other capabilities from a variety of sources. The final characteristic of the now economy will be reach. Always-on, wearable, wireless computing and communications devices, descendants of the wireless phones and PDAs used today, will interconnect us all. FusionBranding will become more contextual in terms of activity, location and immediate interest. Companies and individuals will belong to various interconnected networks that reflect their interests and requirements. Targeting and affinity marketing will converge, seeking to not only ensure that messages are received but that they are relayed to others within the network. But universal reach will conflict with desires for privacy and limited time and attention spans. It also opens doors to substantial marketing conflict. What if all stores in a mall seek to contact us about their specials as we pass by? The increasing ability of companies to reach customers will be tracked by increasing capabilities of customers to block that reach. Seth Godin coined the term "permission marketing" to describe how obtaining recipient permission for communications reduces waste, improves marketing effectiveness and eliminates potential irritation. Permission marketing is the basis for opt-in email in the new economy. In the now economy, reach will result in permission marketing being taken to the obvious next step. Marketing will become increasingly opt-in. Already, some of the most popular sites on the Internet are those that digitally point to sites that allow consumers to opt out of advertising. Replay TV, which zaps commercials, is flying off store shelves. To cope, communications will be sent only to those who have requested it at the time it's requested. These characteristics – immediacy, personalization and reach – will challenge relationship enterprises, relationships, operations and employees. The final chapters examine three key FusionBranding challenges:
Another major management change concerns resource handling. Currently, companies primarily deal with suppliers, customers and distributors, each with well-defined roles. Those roles will morph dramatically in the now economy. Suppliers may deal directly with customers for service. Direct control over employees will change to indirect control over a shifting array of outsourcers, part-timers, consultants and agents. Customers will design and even market products. Suppliers and customers will work in each other's plants. And this will occur all over the globe. Of course, the now economy will bring additional challenges, both locally and internationally. Some are recognizable now, like the ramifications from a falling birthrate in the industrialized world, deregulations or the increasing efficiency and power of financial markets, which exceed that of governments in many cases. Others will emerge from left field. The key to handling these changes will be, as always, working to do business on customer terms. The importance of trust, loyalty and operational excellence must never be forgotten.
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