What is the stream economy?

The ability to catch the consumer’s eye has become far more than flashy neon and holiday sales. As consumption becomes more digital and discerning, targeted offers to calculated demographics become so 2012. Getting and holding the consumer’s attention is now about engaging at the time and method of the consumer’s choice.

Likewise, creating brand loyalists involves moving from those first engagements to fan-level excitement. It sounds great but takes a very deft touch and very smart systems to engage in what Gary Vanyerchuck calls, “The Stream Economy.” (See below) In his own words, “The speed of the world is much faster and the skill-set and the understanding around the content are the biggest stakes in the marketplace.”

Know and delight in advance

The best brands integrate content into a platform that is tuned to Vanyerchuck’s stream economy. Those brands wouldn’t be caught dead showing up with an offer when they’ve made no attempt to know and delight the recipient in advance. Self-serving ways are transparent and increasingly ineffective.

The secret to the stream economy is “seeing” context, meaning the sum of all things that describe the moments for engagement between buyer and seller. Context is a combination of the environment, like weather, and events, like arrival at a particular location. Traditional databases and queries can’t keep up with the stream economy. It’s far too real time.

This article first appeared on The TIBCO Blog and Loyalty Lab Blog.

Google+

Christopher Taylor