A week ago, I was in San Francisco without a car or a driving licence and needed to get from one side of the city to the other. As a “lazy” millennial, I was obviously not going to take the bus. Instead, I took out my smartphone and, for the first time, tapped the grey square with the letter U. A few taps later, I had ordered an Uber and a car appeared in front of me. The driver already knew where I wanted to go, and payment was handled automatically through my linked credit card. All I had to do was get in and be taken to my destination.
For San Francisco residents who do not own a car, this is nothing unusual. The city is, after all, known as a home for tech enthusiasts. I asked my Uber driver Bryce, a 21-year-old hipster who played only remixes of Top 40 songs, whether he ever had run-ins with taxi drivers. Fortunately, he said, it was limited to the “occasional side-eye”, although the taxi market was suffering badly from Uber’s popularity.
It is a good example of disruption: an innovation, often technological, rapidly shakes up an existing market or even makes it disappear. Uber puts pressure on taxis, while Airbnb challenges the hotel market. The Netherlands is also experiencing disruption, as Emerce recently reported.
As PR consultants for B2B and B2C businesses in IT and consumer electronics, it is important that we keep a close eye on technological innovations for our clients. Meanwhile, the media landscape has been changing for years, so disruptive innovation affects PR agencies in several ways too. The gradual decline of paid print newspapers, the rise of free newspapers such as Metro, countless online news platforms, mobile news apps and social media: just think of everything we have seen over the past twenty years.
So far, PR has adapted to the times. In recent years, for example, more agencies, including ours, have added social media services. Yet we still communicate the things our clients believe “more people should know”. We decide how to share a story by asking: “Who says what, in which channel, to whom and with what effect?” Lasswell’s enduring communication model has always proved adaptable.
One unofficial characteristic of disruptive innovation, however, is that established players do not see the impact coming. So perhaps I have got it completely wrong.
Kinyi
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