30 November 2010

Disintermediation


Has “disintermediation” become the newest overused word in the American business world? I seem to hear it a lot these days, and for advertising people at least, it’s probably a bad omen.

“Disintermediation” is an economics term for “the removal of intermediaries in a supply chain”. In the vernacular, it means “cutting out the middleman”. That’s why ad people should listen for this word.

The ways of ye olde marketing are going away slowly, and part of that is the supply chain, if you will, among advertisers, agencies and media owners. Almost four years ago you could read about “Google, Disintermediation and Agencies”.

Yesterday Adweek published an article about Ari Emanuel, the Hollywood talent agent, attempting to disintermediate ad agencies with his new venture, Lverage. The article mentions that talent agents tried this in 1998, but doesn't mention that in 2010 there are plenty of potential disintermediators out there, e.g., business consultants, comms planning shops, and data companies.

If you are a go-with-the-flow type of person, you’ll want to join the crowd using this word. If you are paying attention, however, you’ll want to avoid being the noun in a sentence somebody else uses where “disintermediate” is the verb.

1 comment:

  1. Hi readers, I just came across another good article on the same topic:

    http://www.bnet.com/blog/advertising-business/if-advertising-is-dead-why-do-they-keep-digging-it-up/6633

    ReplyDelete