C-Scape: Conquer the Forces Changing Business Today

That's where this book comes in. Subtitled "Conquer the Forces Changing Business Today," it helps readers do just that. The media revolution has upended the business landscape, turning it into what the author calls a C-Scape – a term based on four key factors beginning with the letter C. It's a world where consumers are in the driver's seat, not producers and marketers; where content takes precedence over distribution; where curation is vital, and where convergence continues to revolutionize every part of business.

Whether you work for a traditional company or a start-up, this book will help you understand the forces at play in today's world and teach you how to harness them to your advantage. You'll read how new approaches to revenue and pricing, advertising and PR, customer service and brand loyalty can help your business thrive.

Now, at this point you may be thinking: "I'm not in the media industry so this book isn't for me." Or maybe you're a self-confessed technophobe and cringe at the mention of Facebook or Twitter.

Well, the author argues that every aspect of every business is increasingly carried out online and if you don't learn to tap into new media trends, you and your business will be left behind. This book is just as relevant to those in retail, in government, in non-profit work or the arts as it is to those working in news or in the music industry.

You'll read how AOL and Time Warner got it wrong, and how Starbucks, Nespresso, Johnson & Johnson, Coca Cola, and Zappos are getting it right. You'll learn how to apply lessons from past failures and successes to ensure your business has a future.

And if you're going to take advice from anyone about how to flourish in the digital age, Kramer is a safe bet.

The author started out in the world of traditional media – as a newspaper reporter and editor at the San Francisco Examiner, the Washington Post and the Trenton Times. But he crossed into the new media world with huge success.

Kramer founded MarketWatch, Inc., the financial information website that partnered with CBS. He worked as a senior adviser at venture capital firm Polaris Venture Partners and was the first president of CBS Digital Media, overseeing all developing new media operations for the TV network.

Today, he serves on the boards of several media and technology companies, including Discovery, American Media and Answers.com, and is a sought-after adviser to tech and digital start-ups. He's also an adjunct professor of media management at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University.

Kramer spent two years interviewing hundreds of business leaders, marketing and PR experts, new media entrepreneurs, and bloggers before writing "C-Scape." So keep listening to hear how new media can help your business deliver excellent customer service, how involving the consumer in the creation process can keep your product on top, and why partnerships are the key to survival and success.

The book is divided into four parts, beginning with an introduction to the four factors shaping the C-Scape and an explanation of how we got where we are today. In the remaining three parts, the author describes the impact of this new reality on markets, products and businesses.

So let's first take a brief look at the four factors comprising the C-Scape.

The first is consumers choose. From the invention of the remote control in the 1950s to the development of TV recording and video-on-demand systems, the power balance has shifted over the past decades from the producer and marketer to the consumer.

Businesses today must offer consumers the choice they expect, monitor their choices and then adjust accordingly. Consumers won't just take what they're given. They'll look elsewhere for something that might suit them better or cost less.

Second, content becomes king. Here, the author charts the demise of the traditional newspaper industry, where delivery and distribution outweighed content. Today, news organizations no longer have a captive audience. They must put content first, give consumers something they can't find elsewhere, and experiment with business models that'll survive this new reality.

The third factor is curation. Most people will agree that we suffer from information overload. We need someone or something to act as a filter, to provide us with the content that most suits our needs or our biases.

Curation is why online newspaper the Huffington Post has been so successful. The site's editors select what they think will matter most to their audience and prioritize the news by category. It took off during the 2008 presidential campaign in the United States, when left-leaning readers could read campaign-related news prioritized by what they, particularly, would find most compelling.

This is also why so many blogs and websites that aggregate information and opinions on specific topics – say health or travel tips – are such a success. In today's world, consumers often give more weight to what their peers think than experts.

The fourth factor is convergence. New and old media is converging to an astonishing degree and technology is advancing so rapidly that we can barely imagine what will be possible in the not-too-distant future. Not only that, but consumers are converging with producers. Amateurs are now able to produce the kind of work that was previously the monopoly of professionals. Businesses that will prosper in this new age are those that realize the new and the old must combine. One example is Lego, which has "crowd-sourced" toy design. In other words, the company allows fans to post their own ideas for models to its site, and then provides the amateur designer with an assembly kit for that model.

So now we're familiar with the landscape, so let's look at some of the author's top tips for avoiding its pitfalls and making the most of its opportunities.

In Part Two, entitled "What happens to markets?" the author shows how the digital age has changed the game rules for advertising, public relations and customer service. Companies must learn to talk with, not at their consumers, and must use the same communication platforms their consumers use.

The author cites examples from FedEx, PepsiCo, online retailer Zappos, and his former employer the San Francisco Examiner to show how companies have successfully embraced new media in their ad and PR campaigns.

But let's look more closely at customer service. In the old days, to make a complaint, you might have had to write a letter or navigate an automated phone system. Faced with a tortuous process, only the most determined would persist.

Today, however, the ability to make a complaint and ensure it's heard loud and clear is at the customer's fingertips – a potentially perilous state of affairs for businesses unless they're on the ball.

Add to that the fact that customers don't just buy products or services – they also recommend them to others, review them publicly, and sometimes contribute to their design – and you can see why companies really need to provide good customer service.

One company that's got customer service down to a fine art is Hulu – a website that distributes TV programming and other video from Fox, NBC, and ABC. It uses social networks to save customers the trouble of contacting customer service at all.

CEO Jason Kilar and many of the company's employees spend a large amount of their time monitoring Twitter feeds for anything written about the company. If a Hulu customer tweets, say, about a misspelled word on the Hulu website, Kilar or one of his employees will see the tweet, call the relevant person and get the problem fixed.

The company is basically eavesdropping on what its customers are saying about it and is ready to respond immediately. The author calls this "collective digital mindreading."

Now, maybe you don't have the manpower or resources to constantly monitor a Twitter feed, but if your competitors have taken customer service to that level, you may want to find a way to match it.

In Part Three, "What happens to products?" the author says involving the consumer in the development of a product or service is key to thriving in the C-Scape. One example is Starbucks, which came up with a website called "My Starbucks Idea," inviting customers to post ideas for improvements. The Dark Cherry Mocha espresso drink was just one of the results of discussions on that site. Similarly, Nike asked customers to send in designs for sneakers.

Vitally, though, Starbucks, Nike, and other successful businesses that allow customers to participate in design always retain ultimate control of the product.

But what if there was a way for consumers to customize a product or service without having to spend a lot of time stating their preferences?

Enter Israel's Bee TV – a service designed to save customers the time of looking for programs or movies they'll enjoy. Bee TV will tell you what you want to watch.

The service suggests programs that will suit viewers without requiring them to describe what they like, write a profile or rate programs they've seen before.

It does so by observing what kind of programs are watched at certain times and on certain days of the week. When the TV's turned on again at the same time of day or week, the viewer's offered similar choices to what they usually watch, and can see previews supplied by the producer or put together in-house.

Now, in this case, Bee TV has created a system for marketing existing products (movies and TV programs), not for designing new ones. But the author argues a similar approach could be part of the development process for any product or service consumers buy repeatedly.

Your history of booking restaurants, for example, could be used to help you find more restaurants to your taste, and it could also help potential investors decide if a particular style of restaurant would be viable in your area.

The point is that to thrive in the new media age, businesses must anticipate customers? needs, perhaps even before they know they have them.

In the fourth and final part of the book, "What happens to businesses?" the author shows how partnerships are key to success in this new landscape – partnerships between new and old media and between fellow entrepreneurs.

Let's take the example of Sarah Austin, a writer and video blogger who's built a business reporting on and advising the tech industry. In the process, she's become a kind of one-woman media conglomerate, an expert on social media and a celebrity in her field.

She's done this through partnerships. Her sponsors include motor giant Ford, telecommunications company T-Mobile, web hosting service Media Temple and Watchitoo, a real-time online collaboration platform.

Ford chose Austin as one of a hundred "Ford Fiesta Movement Agents" when it wanted to market its car to a young, Internet-savvy audience in the United States. The automotive company gave each agent a Fiesta for six months, to promote via social media. After those six months, according to Ford, the campaign had inspired 4.3 million YouTube views, 500,000 Flickr views, three million Twitter impressions, and 50,000 interested potential customers, 97 percent of whom did not own a Ford. That's quite a result for a campaign that involved no traditional media spending. Plus, the partnership boosted the profile of Ford and Austin, benefiting both partners.

Austin's story, and that of many other successful new media entrepreneurs, shows how the C-Scape levels the playing field. No longer do you need a large capital investment, a building in Times Square, or a centuries-old reputation. Media-savvy entrepreneurs can rise to the fore at an astronomical speed – yet another reason why all businesses need to get wise to new media or be left behind.

In "C-Scape," Kramer builds a convincing case for the need to ride the new media wave or risk being knocked off your feet. After reading this book, even the technophobes among us might be willing to experiment with a Facebook page or Twitter feed.

As you'd expect from a veteran journalist, Kramer communicates his message clearly and concisely, although he's guilty of repetition in places. He backs up his ideas with anecdotes and examples from his career and interviews with peers that add color, humor and authority, making this book a compelling read.

And, while he does offer advice on how to navigate the C-Scape, Kramer stresses there's no one-size-fits-all business model or marketing strategy. So he keeps his tips general, allowing readers to sift the learning in the examples he presents, and focus on what's most relevant for them. Readers looking for more prescriptive advice might find this frustrating. If your business has already embraced new media with success, you might think C-Scape has nothing new to offer. And it's true that, more than anything else, this is a comprehensive, authoritative round-up of the latest uses of new-media communications.

But for new-media novices, the book is a must read. You'll get an overview of the landscape and a checklist of what to look out for as you draw up a game plan to thrive in the digital age.

Larry Kramer's "C-Scape" is published by HarperCollins.

That's the end of this episode of Book Insights. Thanks for listening.