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May 28, 2009
Information Unleashed. Marketing Inverted. (Again)
I was doing research for a new project and got into the world of chemistry blogs. Yes, sites like totallysynthetic.com or In the Pipeline. It was rather fascinating, because of the openness, the interaction...the transparency.
My graduate degree is in chemistry and I was raised in the world of peer review journals and arcane publishing rules. To read journals for projects early in my career, I would have to visit medical or university libraries, or make journal requests through library sharing services. Now, the world of science is increasingly online. And the social media concepts that are sweeping B2C markets are rewriting the rules for scientific collaboration and technical publishing. Sites like ResearchGate are emerging to create social networks of science geeks sharing research notes like others share photos on Facebook.
Of course, this whole Internet thing did start as a government and university resource, so it is not totally surprising. In a fascinating PPT presentation by Antony Williams, a vocal proponent of the "freeing" of technical publication content, I came across an interesting quote attributed to Peter Frishauf of The Medscape Journal of Medicine who predicts "within 5 years, most medical journals will be open access, .... provide access to trusted articles and data at no cost." That concept is almost more amazing to me than the Boston Globe ceasing to publish its hardcopy edition. That both scenarios are immensely possible speaks volumes about the changes occuring.
The implications for B2B marketers operating in the midst of this shift are substantial. As information becomes more fluid, accessible and portable, new content navigation paths will emerge and formalize. And the distribution of product information will become more susceptible to the combinations of search and word-of-mouth (reference) marketing that are redefining consumer markets. Companies seeking to notify audiences of exciting technology breakthroughs will face the same challenges of reaching an audience that controls its content inputs.
For individuals trained in the old research paradigms, these changes can seem scary...how is content validated and curated? How is trust established? Yet, the promise of accessible, indexed, structured content is so energizing that the community in these pure science markets are rapidly evolving to address these challenges. And, in the process, leave many companies struggling to devise new ways to market those shiny new devices, chemicals, drugs, polymers, etc.....
Posted by jcioban at May 28, 2009 7:58 PM
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