Losing control?

One of the more interesting blogs I peruse periodically is Micro Persuasion by Steve Rubel of Edelman. He recently spent a day in Paris (geez, life is tough) meeting with European marketers and PR pros who specialize in online communications.

In spite of their cultural differences, he found they all shared one concern: loss of control! Here's an excerpt:

Control is the lingua franca that unites us all. Every single person around the table shared an experience of how communicators are concerned about losing control. They simply don't want to give it up. While it was somewhat refreshing to hear that we all are dealing with similar issues, you could also see that the dominoes are starting to fall. We shared lots of inspiring success stories that give hope that bit by bit, we are all changing mindsets together.

I don't blame marketers/PR pros for being afraid to lose control. Nobody wants to. However, the genie is out of the bottle. We can't put it back. We need to look this gorilla in the eye and accept it. We need to embrace this change and do so globally.

Fear of losing control...the need (and the reluctance) to embrace change...where have I heard that before? Wait a minute -- it's the story of my life! On second thought, maybe it's the story of everybody's life. Must mean marketers are people too.

To read the rest, here's the permalink.