The ‘implicit bargain’ between consumers and advertisers is breaking down with the coming of the information superhighway, according to a speaker at the Canadian Media Directors 1994 Conference.

Connecticut-based consultant and author Don Peppers told the conference, held April 20 in Toronto, that, until now, the deal has been for advertisers to pay for programming or space, and, in return, they hope the consumer watches or sees the ads.

Now, Peppers says the new marketing paradigm will be ‘dialogue-based,’ with advertisers and consumers talking one to one using interactive media.

He says monologue-based advertising – a message going out from one advertiser to many consumers – is becoming a thing of the past.

He says dialogue-based marketing also means ‘information superhighway’ is the wrong metaphor, since a highway has a limited number of lanes, but the electronic version can have as many as anyone wants.

Jayne Zenaty Spittler, vice-president and director of media research at Leo Burnett Advertising in Chicago and a member of that agency’s Interactive Marketing Group, was emphatic about the change interactive systems will bring to advertising and daily life.

Zenaty Spittler says interactivity will cause a shift from the 30-second spot to more multi-layered or ‘menued’ advertising that is less image-oriented and more informative.

As for coping with the emerging interactive world, central to her message was the need to stay flexible, to embrace change, because ‘the future belongs to the small and the quick.’

Echoing Pepper’s message of dialogue-based marketing, Zenaty Spittler says the media industry has to get used to managing more than one message at a time because the new technological environment means there will be many more messages to manage.

She says one consequence of interactivity will be that the results of advertising can be better documented, so there will be changes in agencies’ compensation.

She says to survive in this new interactive age, it is necessary for the media industry to learn new skills, adding its members should talk to direct marketers and those in the catalogue industry and sign up for on-line services.

Charles Coupal, vice-president, media communications and technology research at Wood Gundy in Toronto, was bullish on the outlook for the media industry.

Coupal says Wood Gundy has looked into the next five years as far as it reasonably can and predicts air time and linage to improve in 1994-95, for example.

He sees 200,000 jobs added to the economy this year, and the same number added next year, with an $11-billion rise in consumption as a result.

He warns tv’s cost-per-thousand will rise several per cent a year, but softens that blow by saying specialty channels and interactive couponing offer ‘new frontiers’ in capturing viewers’ attention.

Coupal says over the next few years, the cable industry’s capital spending will be in the $5 billion to $6 billion range.

He says in two to five years Wood Gundy expects cable system expansion will jump to 120 to 240 channels in large urban areas and to 60 channels in the smaller centres.

But Coupal says despite the leap in channel capacity, Wood Gundy does not believe the future of tv will be nearly as fragmented as once feared.

He says another six to eight Canadian specialty channels are expected to come on-stream, but the media industry should not expect a ‘u.s. deluge’ of services.

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission is scheduled to hand down its decision on some or all specialty licence applications June 15.

Although the media directors’ conference focussed largely on the information superhighway and new advertising media, well-established properties were not overlooked.

Coupal says Wood Gundy sees newspapers ‘ready to fight back’ against the new media, adding, newspapers will experience ‘gentrification,’ or an upmarket shift, driven by those in the 50+ age bracket.

Seven of the speakers at the conference – Peppers, Zenaty Spittler, Coupal, Scott McDonald, director of research at Time Warner Interactive Group, Peter Jones, president of Apple Canada, Pierre Dion, vice-president, sales and marketing at Le Groupe Videotron and Roger Keay, vice-president of technology and strategic planning at Rogers Communications – expressed varying degrees of concern about potential drawbacks of interactivity.

But perhaps speaker Andrew Prozes, president of Southam Information and Technology Group, spent the longest time on the information superhighway’s downside, although like the others he was ultimately optimistic about interactive media.

Prozes says it is not clear who will own or operate the information superhighway and what changes it will bring.

In fact, he says, some influential commentators say the highway will be years in coming.

And Prozes says another issue that needs to be addressed is what marketers will do with the databases they compile, which he terms a ‘huge privacy-ethical’ matter.