Intervention opportunity?

According to the latest findings, we spend 58% of our waking time interacting with the media; people sleep less and spend less time with their family in order to watch more television; megaplexes and superstores are increasingly designed to resemble theme parks; and the Mall of America in Minneapolis hosts more visitors than Walt Disney World, Disneyland and the Grand Canyon combined. In his new book, The Entertainment Economy: How Mega-Media Forces Are Transforming Our Lives, Michael J. Wolf asserts: “We have come to expect that we will be entertained all the time. Products and brands that deliver on this expectation are succeeding. Products that do not will disappear.”

© Véronique Vienne, First published by Communication Arts, March/April 2000