Faster than light, slower than a good idea!

Nothing travels like a good idea. Not even company gossip (unless it's a good idea - and I shall not illustrate with examples).

Detour to cricket - India won the T20 World Cup in a humdinger (which, incidentally, means "a person, thing, action, or statement of remarkable excellence or effect") against arch rivals Pakistan. In the end, Misbah ul Haq, without whom the Pakistanis wouldn't have stood a chance, played a bad stroke to get out 5 runs short of the target and handed the cup to India. Now this post is not about the cricket. It's about a great idea.

Someone somewhere - ONE PERSON - came up with this joke right after the game -
KNOCK KNOCK
WHO'S THERE
MISBAH
MISBAH WHO
YOU MIS BAH 5 RUNS MAAN! (for best effect say this with a carribean accent)

Now over the course of yesterday, 4 different people who don't know each other and live in different countries emailed/SMSd me this joke! Now think about this - after the match, ONE smart ass who was probably watching the game with a bunch of friends came up with the joke. His friends laughed. They loved it so much that as soon as they left the bar they were watching it at, in their drunken stupor, SMSd 4-5 of their friends, who in turn probably shared this with their families and them with their friends. And just like that within 24 hours - hundreds of thousands of people were laughing at the same thing! All of this at ZERO COST!!!

Looking out into the future, 2 things come to mind -
1) Reaching your consumer is getting easier. You're spoilt for choice. The consumer has millions of different ways of recieving a message through the day. Mobile and internet technologies have changed our lives completely and I think we haven't even seen the tip of the iceberg.
2) Ironically, it's also harder to REALLY reach her with your message. As a result of the media explosion, she is being bombarded by so many more messages vs what she's ever had before. Now she's suddenly more discerning, more savvy about what she chews and what she spits out. So ideas, are going to have to be more hardworking.

I'm nervously excited to see what happens next.