A friend of mine works for a national organization. Its leaders decided they needed a new website. So they identified some firms that might help. They sent out a request for proposals. They got lots of them.
But a funny thing happened on the way to the cyberspace forum. The bidders wanted to do design. They wanted to do programming. They wanted to “build the client’s brand.” But none of them wanted to provide the content—the words, the images, the video, the music that would either inspire people or bore them to tears.
This is not uncommon. I hear constantly from people who’ve signed on for some tool or another in response to a fad or fetish or sales pitch—for blogs, or Facebook, or Twitter, or a new website, or print ads, or TV spots, or radio commercials, or brochures, or what have you. Then, oh by the way, someone tells them they have to fill up that time or space, sometimes over and over, with something, anything.
All too often, that “filler” fails. Because it was done on the fly. Or on the cheap. Or without smart strategy. Or without sufficient understanding of the audience. Or because the tool that was purchased in response to some fad or fetish or sales pitch wasn’t right for the job.
I love all the options available to contemporary communicators. I love orchestrating the mix. But in the end, the tools are just tools. You can’t fill them up with just anything and pray they’ll work or pronounce them failures when they don’t. The message still matters. Content was, is, and always will be king.
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