In a media world in which everyone seems to be waiting around for something to die, the Brothers Einstein propose that local media franchises go out and kill something instead.

In order to do so, however, we must first intervene on our own behalf and challenge the tool-driven myth that suggests we can somehow  think globally and act locally.  Because we can’t.  The same digital tools and the same digital mentality that allow us to reach out globally in fact inhibit and encumber our ability to act locally, and – if left unchecked – will eventually drive us right out of business.  The only way for local media franchises to survive and prosper in the new digital media ecosphere is to somehow re-engineer how they currently think and behave.  Stated otherwise: they need to stop waiting around for something to die.  They need to go kill something.

Such an ambitious objective demands a galvanizing theme as an imperative to seize and re-direct the efforts of local media franchises.  Of course, any theme that speaks to the promise instead of the status quo must by definition challenge the status quo and any conventional wisdom embodied in it.  Today’s status quo is very much a concession to the brute speed and power of our own digital technologies, and – like every other status quo – is promoted and defended by a litany of canonized mythologies that when repeated often enough over time assume the false mantle of conventional wisdom.

We shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us. – Marshall McLuhan

The myth that best embodies the numbers-driven cynicism and massive systemic failures of the digital age is the imperative that instructs us to think globally and act locally – a mythology which in fact supports and promotes only those brands and institutions with the resources to think and act globally in the first place, a luxury few if any local franchises can likely afford to entertain.  Big-box media – all driven by mega-agencies on behalf of big brand advertisers, and all with the identical think-global-act-local mentality – do to local media what big-box stores do to local retailers: they steal market share and drive down prices.

Tens of thousands of hours spent in slavish fealty to our own digital tools over the past generation have conditioned media franchises to believe that they are in the media sales business, when in fact they’re not.  Quite the contrary: they’re in the advertising sales business, and those who continue to confuse the two won’t remain in business for much longer.  That’s why the Brothers Einstein have devised a common-sense strategy to lift local media sales cultures out of the tool-driven media sales business and return them to their roots in the idea-driven advertising sales business.  That’s why the Brothers Einstein now challenge the local market status quo with a clarion – and highly contrarian – call to stand up, switch course, and Think Local, Act Local.

Stop waiting around for something to die.  Contact us today to learn more about the Brothers Einstein Think Local, Act Local strategy.  Let’s go out and kill something together.

P.S. For more Think-Local-Act-Local thoughts, check out this post…