"Digital is better" - 20 years later

Editorial - September 23, 2015

"My company already has a website!" you may be thinking. But that's not what it means. Digitalization describes the current turbulent pace of the digital sphere, which no company that wants to be on the market tomorrow can afford to ignore. But let's start at the beginning. Perhaps the automatic scanning of incoming mail, the use of digital communication channels and archiving on hard disks instead of folders have already been common practice in your company for several years. However, this does not go far enough, as it still corresponds to the traditional meaning of the term "digitization" - the transformation of analogue media into digital data.As simple as this term "digitalization" sounds, it does not do justice to the many different forms it takes. In today's usage, it encompasses a wide variety of areas such as the Internet of Things, iBeacon, Smarthome, Oculus Rift, mobile payment, augmented reality, Google Glass, cloud, etc. You've heard it all somewhere before, right? Good, because it contains dynamite - perhaps for your industry too. The power of disruption, which is usually not triggered by the current competition but by an unknown third party, has already completely revolutionized some industries.One example: the solution to digital music was not the CD, but today it lies in a designer MP3 player with a phone function and music streaming apps. The radical upheaval of digitization that the CD heralded in the 1980s, long before digital photography, is a tragic story. Its triumphant advance and pioneering role were probably its undoing: it was the first widespread introduction of a digital medium into all private households. If it was supposed to replace the LP, which it was expected to do with ease at the time, today it has mutated into an anachronism itself. When was the last time you used a Disc-Man (mobile CD player)? From displacer to quasi-replaced in just 25 years. The record, which has been declared dead several times, is booming again and will outlive the CD.If you apply this insight to companies, it means: Can your product or service be digitized? What would the digital equivalent of your service look like? Or can my entire company even be digitized? What are the benefits of digitalization? This is precisely where digital innovations that have so far been too receive little attention in companies.Do I have to join in as an entrepreneur? Do we really all have to become technology companies, like Nick Sohnemann from Future Candy postulated at the Trend Day in Berlin months ago? There is no general answer to this question - in some sectors there may be very little potential for digitalization, while in others there may be a great deal - we recommend that every company should undergo a "digital check" to determine the extent to which certain business areas can be supplemented or substituted. The idea of digitalization must not become an end in itself and cannot be a panacea, nor should it simply be ignored. Digital concepts should be created and evaluated, and a self-assured approach should be taken.ore pioneering role in their industry take. We mustn't think that if we don't look long enough with the Vogel-Strauss tactic, the Internet and all its manifestations will disappear again.Bear in mind that your target groups might think differently than you do: If young adults judge companies and brands by their digital presence and services and align their consumer behavior accordinglyNo matter how good your core offering is, if you are not perceived as a modern brand with digital expertise "out there on the Internet", your business will suffer. Today, it is not only contact and services that need to be redefined, but also your brand management itself. How fit is your brand in the digital world? "The one picture" no longer exists. Today, people encounter your corporate identity in a multitude of digital and analog touchpoints. The monotheistic brand pulpit is passé; top-down communication is now undermined by social media. Adapt and grow with it is the motto.That Internet advertising revenues will soon have overtaken those of the print mediaThis is not new and is not only due to the increasing range of devices, but also to the growing number of users. Not all households subscribe to a daily newspaper anymore and more than half of the population already use smartphones. The trend that a paradigm shift is also on the horizon here is supported by a number of studies (Studies on Germany: here and here & Study on Switzerland).But when will all media companies finally understand that they are losing advertising money because of their inactivity in digital offerings and because they have not consistently driven forward their digital transformation? Today, promising projects are being canceled because there is supposedly a lack of advertising money. They missed the opportunity to invest when investment was still possible. The BBC is leading the way: This year at the Cannes Festival it presented Advertising customers present their new augmented reality news world. Equipped in this way, we can look forward to the future of the media with confidence.Another example:Formerly powerful brands such as Nokia failed to transform their industry in the first 20 years of the Internet, and through acute half-heartedness or even inactivity, they have brought about their own demise. But entire industries such as publishing have also suffered badly. The materiality of their core business has disappeared due to the fact that texts can also be read on a screen without having to buy paper. In other words: Publishers should have smelled the fuse and offered their content on a comparable device at the same time as the iPad or Kindle, for example; in transforming their domain, they have criminally limited themselves to watching. The same is happening in the financial sector. Highly technologized in areas such as the international stock exchange business, the banks are silently observing how Paypal, among others, has taken over large parts of payment transactions - and how their blood has been drained. Here, too, the business is being done by companies from outside the sector that the long-established players had not previously seen as competition, let alone had on their radar.The whole of Europe is ceding almost the entire market for disruptive concepts to America, or more precisely to Silicon Valley, thanks to a diametrically different investment culture. It does not always make sense to hinder an industry upheaval with short-term cost-benefit calculations, when a courageous investment in future-oriented concepts would have had a much more positive effect on your balance sheet in the medium term. Get good advice. In some places, however, attempts are also being made to make a lot of money with the digitalization trend - if this "revolution" is already being dictated by politicians, one can and must become suspicious of how Gunnar Sohn rightly criticized.Not everything happens overnight and there are some promising developments in the industry and at universities in Switzerland and neighboring countries. We would do well to find a more favorable breeding ground for technical pioneering in the digital sector and to find solutions together. Fittingly, collaboration is also a typical feature of successful digital innovations.Author: Daniel Unger, Creative Director, Goldbach Interactive (Switzerland) AG

"Digital is better" - 20 years later

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