INTERVIEW:
Question 1
Why has marketing become so important in the last 30, 40, 50 years?
Answer
I think what is happening is that advertising and marketing funds have
represented the resource that has helped create global properties and telecommunications
in media, helped provide support for the development of content that ultimately attracts
people. So I think there has been a mutual relationship between marketing communications,
global marketing and globalization. They are all interconnected.
Question 2
What changes with the Internet?
Answer
A number of things change with the Internet. One, it is not a question of size anymore.
The Net in its essence is very democratic. You can have a company - and this is a real
example - selling pipe fitting from Columbus, Ohio, and in the past all your trading area
was simply Ohio in the middle of the United States. Now, because of the Internet, this
same company has sales and communication and customer relationships all around the world.
That kind of example is multiplying.
I think the growth of electronic commerce on the Internet in general is going through
the same pattern. You are no longer limited by the boundaries of time and space,
especially geography, and whether you are an Italian company selling your goods and
services from the Net in California or in Italy makes no difference. And so the Net is
furthering that globalization.
Question 3
What are the key winning factors in Net advertising?
Answer
I think they are pretty much the same as in all other kinds of advertising. Ultimately,
you have to have an attractive positioning and you have to be creative in terms of
delivering that message and you have to deliver it to people at the moment in time when
their mind sets are ready, willing and able to accept or at least consider that message.
The same principles in old media and new media are pretty much the same.
Question 4
Are there any companies that rather than considering Net advertising or marketing a kind
of integration with their core business, believe in only being Net advertisers?
Answer
To a certain extent yes. Take some of the large computer sellers now, such as Dell
Computers and Gateway: not only do they do most of their sales on the Internet, but a
large proportion of their communications is also advertising on the Net. Not just on their
website but ads and banner ads on other websites. Those are two great examples
Question 5
Can a good website for a traditional company, not just for these technological
companies, really make a difference, or not yet?
Answer
Not yet. It can’t hurt; it can certainly add incrementally to all the other
communications. But for a traditional company the Net today is insufficient.
Question 6
What are the differences between normal advertising and interactive advertising? What
changes and in what way does it change?
Answer
To a certain extent everything changes. One thing about the Net is that people are
increasingly redefining what it is they get and when they get it. So you go onto the Net
and you can set up your homepage to pull in the news and information that is interesting
to you. By the same token, over time on a website sponsored, for example by a traditional
advertiser, if you track it correctly you can understand where your audience is coming
come from, what website are they coming from to your audience, what kind of information or
entertainment content these people have asked for before, and over time you can begin to
very highly define and redefine the kinds of messages that you deliver to these people.
This is very personalized, very customizable.
Question 7
Let’s say that you are giving a lecture. Could you give companies a few tips about
what is really important when you want to advertise on-line.
Answer
Targeting is especially important. You have to identify far more than just demographics -
age and sex - who your target audience is, what kind of interests they might have, and
therefore what other kinds of websites they may tend to visit. And then you put your
advertising on those websites. Hopefully, you then draw them to your website or to your
microsite. But you really have to understand what motivates your target customer or
consumer. Much more than being on television. You can run a spot on television. If the
program is popular enough, you will get all different kinds of people in the audience. A
website is so specialized and so self-selective that if you make a mistake, you are
totally wrong.
Question 8
Other aspects?
Answer
At the essence of web communication is information. That’s why people go on the web.
They may be entertained by the information but they are primarily using it to get at the
news, the information and knowledge about a certain area or subject that they are
interested in at the moment. So the whole trick in effectively communicating with people
is to try and understand, as I said, who they are, what are the likely areas or directions
or vectors of information that they are interested in, how their past behavior might tend
to skew them to direction A, to direction B and direction C and then to provide that
information in a communication envelope that is interesting, that keeps their attention,
that ultimately keeps them coming back for more. A lot of the information is very
time-bound, very situationally oriented. For example, when the Wall Street crash occurred
in October 1997, it turns out that during the business day more people went to the
Internet to get the news than turned on the television set in their offices. And they went
to a variety of sites. So that time is critical, things that motivate people. Sometimes,
if you are providing the information, it is tough because you don’t know in advance
that Wall Street is going to crash. But you certainly know that an investor, for example,
wants very topical news and information, is very concerned about getting a vast array of
information, small chunks that they can absorb, so you don’t want to overwhelm them.
You don’t want to deliver the equivalent of a four-page magazine ad, because people
won’t have the patience to sit through it, so you have to contract all the
information in very short bits. The other hallmark of the Internet is that people tend to
move from site to site, from page to page within the site; they don’t stay very long.
It’s much like the behavior that people evince now when they watch television,
especially if they are satellite or cable subscribers and they sit with a remote and they
watch for 10 seconds and they go to channel 2 to channel 73 and so forth. A lot of people
do the same with their portfolio of websites. So you have to stop them in their tracks to
attract them and deliver the information but you can’t depend on them staying for a
very long period of time.
Question 9
The Net is very democratic, everybody can be on the Net, but there’s a big difference
between being Coca Cola on the Net and being just a small company. In Italy we have a lot
of very small and medium-sized businesses with about 10 people. Can you give us a strategy
which is be wide enough for more than one kind of company, on how to be on the Net and not
get lost in the ocean.
Answer
It all has to do with targeting. If had a small company and I was just selling another
soft drink there is no way I would ever be able to compete effectively against Coca Cola,
for example. But if I had a special flavor product or something that I knew would appeal
to a certain discreet portion of the population, I would use the Internet research
that’s available to me There is a lot of research available on the Net, and I would
try and home in on those areas of information or entertainment which those people are
likely to go to, then go to the owners of those sites and try and negotiate putting my
banners on their site. Frankly, that’s how a lot of smaller companies actually go
about it. Again, have a niche product that delivers something for a very small audience,
understand where these people are likely to go on the Internet. Despite the fact that
there are millions of pages available on the Internet, much like there are hundreds and
thousands of cable networks available, most people tend to fall into a pattern of visiting
or watching in the cable sense only 10 or 12 outlets that they find over time meet their
needs. So although the Net is democratic and vast, there are opportunities to take
advantage of the natural tendency of people only to visit and watch and view what they are
familiar with and comfortable with and home in on a shortlist and begin to try and do some
banner advertising or interstitial advertising.
Question 10
This brings us to another subject which is interesting. Now, we have so much information,
with thousands of channels, that the only precious thing that is left in our hands is
basically time, time is a true value. Now, how do you filter this enormous amount of
information?
Answer
It becomes more and more difficult. One of the things that we seeing more and more is this
sense of information overload. People are bombarded with messages wherever they go. They
walk outdoors there are storefront ads, there are bus ads, there are outdoor ads. They are
in a building and they hear a radio and there are ads, they open up a newspaper or a
magazine and there are ads, they turn on the TV and there are ads. Most people actually
put perceptual filters and perceptual defenses on them to try and filter out a lot of the
material that’s not relevant to their needs at the moment. So a smart advertiser
takes advantage of that. Again, it’s thinking through when your message will be most
relevant and most appropriate for people, and then trying to put your message in time and
space exactly when that occurs. Otherwise, an advertiser could go broke trying to buy all
the television, radio, out-of-home, bus, and Internet ads that would impinge upon people
all of the time. But it’s still an area of great concern.
Question 11
Companies first were giving out goods, now most of the companies are giving out services.
Can you explain how the role has changed, the core mission of companies and of
communications companies as well, and how it’s going to change in the future? How are
the economics of this going to change,?
Answer
We already see in certain sectors of the economy - I’m speaking more of the US
economy - it’s very much become a service-based economy. While the physical
production of goods and services is important and represents a strong core, the bulk of
the money, investment and resources are actually in the service component around it. As
people go through their lives, they want more than, for example, just a margarine or any
other product, they want the service that’s associated with it. They’d like some
recipes about how to use it in cooking. They’d like information to be provided or
entertainment to be provided to them as a service by whoever the manufacturer or
distributor are. I think worldwide we are moving definitely into more of a service
economy. A service including not just "Can I dry clean your suit today?" but
service in terms of providing information and entertainment that is important at the
moment. Think about the worldwide infrastructure of telecommunications, of media companies
or communication companies. It’s all really part of the service business as broadly
defined, and that keeps growing in terms of its share of the world economy.
Question 12
How is this changing the economics of companies?
Answer
I think it does so in a couple of ways. Companies that recognize that they are in a
service business are putting more of their own internal resources into providing service
as opposed to specifically manufacturing a product. For example, Dell and Gateway are
examples of two great contemporary companies enjoying huge success. At the core, of
course, they manufacture or assemble computers based on what consumers say they want. But
I think both companies have vast arrays of people whose whole focus is customer service.
What is it you want, then after you get it are you happy with it? Do you have any problems
with it? Can we help you modify it to make sure that the bugs are out and that it works
properly?. In the past all of their workforce would be devoted to the physical assembling
of the product. I think most of their workforce now is communicating with their customers.
That is a service business.
Question 13
It may sound like a tough question, but how do you make money from the Net?
Answer
Right now you don’t. I don’t think people have quite figured out what the right
economic model is, and a lot of the problem is historical. The Internet itself began as
communication between government research facilities and universities. And a typical user,
for example a graduate student at a university, never really thought about the economics
of the information that he or she was getting from the Internet. In fact, I was at an
earlier session some years ago at the MIT Medialab, and I remember sitting with Negroponte
and a couple of other people talking to a big audience in one of the amphitheaters
composed primarily of graduate students at MIT and we were talking about the possibility
of advertising on the Net. I remember clearly one of the students in the back got up - he
was spitting, he was so angry - and he said, "Damn you all," he said,
"advertising on the Internet, don’t you know that the Internet is free?"
Well, he was ignorant. Because the truth is that even in those days somebody was paying
for the connectivity, someone was paying for the transmission of the data that this
graduate student was getting. So that mind set has changed considerably. At the moment
people are expecting a lot of things for free on the Net. There are some examples of
services that are making money on the Net. The Wall Street Journal originally had a
free site on the Net and about 2 years ago they switched over to a subscription site. And
sure enough, they lost about 80% of their audience. They went from about 250,000 people
down to about 20,000 people who agreed to pay for the personalized Wall Street Journal
and people said at the time, "Well, that’s it. Nobody will pay for information
on the Net. It’s a dead issue." The truth is that over time The Wall Street
Journal, as an example of a successful operation, has actually built back many tens of
thousands of paying customers. So I think it is a question of time. As we move forward we
will become more comfortable with paying for specialized information or entertainment, and
the providers will figure out a better way of charging for it and eventually we will
understand the economics. But right now it’s a big question mark.
Question 14
The economics of advertising on the Net are the same in real society: you have a very vast
website, you make banners pay a very high cost. Is it exactly the same or is it different?
Answer
No, actually the economics of banner ads on the web are quite different. When you go to a
television network, for example, and you purchase some advertising time, you are normally
paying on a cost per thousand basis. Sometimes on a cost per spot basis but usually on a
cost per thousand basis, and depending on the rating, you get a certain charge. On the web
you can do it in a variety of ways. You can pay for cost per thousand based on the record
of the people who come to visit the site. If you ask for or have a banner that calls for
action to click, you can actually negotiate and pay for the number of people who click on
the site. There are a number of people experimenting now, especially if they are offering
transactions, that you only pay for those portions of the audience that actually buy
something from your banner ad. So we are entering into a new era with many different ways
of charging and paying for web advertising.
Question 15
The future of commerce on-line. You know that it’s going very well in the States,
this US$300 billion figure, it’s going very badly in Europe now. Is it going to
change?
Answer
Yes, it is definitely going to change. There are a couple of reasons why it hasn’t
gone as far and as fast in Europe as in the United States. First: the US infrastructure is
better than the European infrastructure. That’s changing. More people are getting
connected on-line. More satellite distribution. I believe in La Repubblica today
there is an announcement of the distribution of Internet connectivity from a satellite
that is DVD compatible at 2 MB per second. I think the article said it will be available
in October. So that is changing throughout Europe. Secondly: people are concerned about
the security of the Internet: if I buy on the Internet, somebody is going to get my credit
card number and start using it. That of course is still a concern in the United States; it
was a much bigger concern in the United States a few years ago. The truth is whether that
is a real problem or more a perceptual problem. As people slowly and incrementally make
more and more purchases on the Internet, those fears will go away. There are all kinds of
encryption schemes, secure service schemes. I think ultimately Europe will catch up. In
fact, some of the estimates now are that European on-line connectivity will grow over the
next 3 to 4 years to 50 or 60 million people, which is a major increase over what it is
today. So I think that before we know it we will have very high levels of worldwide
connectivity, and people will have more experience in on-line commerce and they’ll
make their purchases.
Question 16
Is there a risk that advertising on the Net will take away money from the TV networks? Are
they worried about this?
Answer
I think some of the TV networks are worried about it. I don’t think it’s a real
fear, because if companies use the Net in conjunction with their old media and grow their
business, that means their share is higher, the sales are higher, more money is available
for advertising. I don’t think we’ll reach the point in the next 10 years where
people will say, "You know what? I’m not going to be on TV, I’m going to be
on the Internet." That’s especially true because, ultimately, I think TV will be
distributed in part on the Internet. And so we will still be buying time from television
networks and television stations, but part of the distribution chain to those consumers
who elect to use their PCs or a TV-PCs to get digital communications will be through the
web.
Question 17
How is distribution going to change?
Answer
More people will be on-line at higher connectivity speed than ever before. I can say that
at any point. A year from now that will be true, 2 years from now that will be true, 5
years from now that will be true. That’s one aspect. The other thing that is going to
change is that we are going to move to digital television. Television is the most powerful
entertainment and information medium the world has ever known. Part of it is because of
the content, not because of the distribution system. Most people at home really don’t
care whether they’re getting it over the air, through a cable or through a satellite.
They just want the content, the information, the entertainment. I think as the web and the
Internet and television converge and broadcasters offer their products and services on the
web, at least through part of the distribution chain and perhaps for all of the
distribution chain, it’s simply going to help further the growth, I think, of a very
robust TV-based economy. We won’t be thinking of the web as different from
television, and perhaps in true digitization, as different from magazines and newspapers:
most newspapers ultimately will be electronically distributed. The key is going to be at
the end-line display device. I am connected worldwide. I assure you that I am the most
connected person you’ve ever met in your life. But you know something, I still prefer
to read a hard copy. So, even if I have loaded a presentation or a memo onto my computer,
I will always take a printout with me because I’m more comfortable that way. Watching
TV or listening to the radio is different. This is another example of how the web changes
everything. My office is in midtown Manhattan in one of the big office buildings. It is
impossible to get a clear radio signal in those buildings. So when I come on in the
morning and turn my computer on, I go to one of the services and I click on the radio
station. Of late I have found a radio station called Beethoven FM out of Santiago
de Chile. Here I am in New York and I have that running in the background through my
computer speakers while I’m busy working. That’s change. Perhaps even the
advertisers on this Chilean radio station should start paying for me as a member of the
audience.
Question 18
Would you advise investing in NASDAQ? Would you invest in the digital companies, and if
so, how would you invest in these companies?
Answer
You definitely should, there is no question. I believe it’s important, because they
represent an important component of the economy, and they will continue to grow as the
needs and demands for this digital environment continue to grow. As to which ones to
invest in, if I was so smart, I would not be sitting here because I would be on a beach
somewhere enjoying my riches. Certainly companies that provide technology applications and
technology services are important. In the past I have been very successful investing in
Cisco, which provides a lot of the switches, but is not too successful in some of the
products and services. But it is high risk because the technology portion of NASDAQ is
very volatile. Right now, any company that’s associated with the digital economy has
a very exaggerated valuation, which I think is going to be calibrated for ultimately, and
certain adjustment will be made, but I would definitely keep investing in technology
companies.
Question 19
First of all, the inversion of the McLuhan theory, the message is the medium, the medium
is the message. Why do you say that?
Answer
McLuhan said in the 1960s that the medium is the message. And I think what he meant to say
or what he did say in other writings about that is that the medium that you use to deliver
a marketing communications message also adds some of its personality to the message
itself. Television has a certain component, and just being on television or advertising in
a certain program, that program environment adds to or sometimes takes away from the
communicability of the message. That’s "the medium is the message". In the
new age where everything will become digital, where you’ll be able to view it, see
it, read it in any possible display device, radio PC, TV, electronic billboard outside,
the message itself, in effect, becomes a medium, because people will very carefully select
the media that they are exposed to. I like to say that they "drape themselves"
in their own unique portfolio of media exposure. Depending on what you use and how you use
it, the message itself then, in effect, becomes a medium for them. It’s like on MTV.
In the United States MTV began something called pop-up ads. They’d be running a video
or the video jockey would be doing some kind of stupidity and a little box would start
appearing and there would be a snide comment contradicting what he was saying, or making a
point about a music video. And advertisers have actually started taking the idea of a
little pop-up appearing on the screen and growing but never overcoming the screen -
that’s a medium in effect -and using that to create their own messages during
programming. So things are wide open.
Question 20
Convergence and divergence. What is your opinion?
Answer
What makes today so unique is that convergence and divergence are happening at the same
time. Convergence is when you put together telcom, computers, information and
entertainment. They are all becoming digitized and ultimately they will all be distributed
in the same fashion. That has been going on for quite a number of years. But over time we
have also conditioned people to expect, to demand, to seek out a very diverse source of
media. Whether it’s the 10 cable network systems that they watch or the 5 radio
stations that they listen to or the 11 magazines that they read each week: there are so
many options available that people will take many components of all of those things, so
they are diverging. Multiple communications, multiple modes. So we have the consumer doing
this, while the technology is bringing it all together and both are happening at the same
time.
Question 21
How much does advertising influence communication in the world today?
Answer
I think advertising exerts a very strong degree of influence; some of it may be subtle
or inadvertent. Advertising pays for the content that is distributed on most media. It is
not that anyone should ever consciously change what the content is in order to reflect the
needs or desires of a advertiser, that would be totally wrong. You have to separate, I
think, a little or a lot in a journalistic case, the content from the advertising. But the
mere fact that advertising pays the bills to a large extent means that there is a certain
degree of influence. Sometimes that is badly used. For example, IBM was very dissatisfied
last year about a cover story about Lou Gerstner. I am not sure if it was Mr. Gerstner
himself or somebody else at IBM, said, "You know what? We disagree with this article,
we are pulling all of our advertising from all Time Warner Turner publications." That
may be an incorrect way to influence.
I think it’s a matter of subtlety and indirect influence. I would certainly be
opposed to and I haven’t really experienced professionally many cases of where there
has been a direct attempt to influence what the content is. An advertiser may have a
choice. I disagree with the content being distributed or presented in this program or I
disagree with this program in general because I don’t agree with its production
values or the direction that it’s going, and I will exert my own influence in effect
by not advertising on it. That certainly happens. You know when we do network television
negotiations and purchases in the United States, one of the things that is very important
to our clients is "Can I be happy with my advertising appearing in and around this
program?" So the content decisions are sometimes made. "I don’t think that
is quite right for us. We are trying to present a different kind of image, this content is
a little bit different." That’s one. I personally have almost never been
involved in an attempt to change a journalistic content, although there are examples much
talked about in the press, perhaps, where this occurs. The IBM issue with Fortune
and Time Warner Turner is an example of that. It happens. But as a general rule, I think
the idea is to try and keep the content separate from the advertising. Most of the
American broadcast networks keep the programming very separate from the sales department.
In fact, if you go to the sales department, and ask, "Hey, can you do me a favor? Can
you do X, Y and Z? Or talk to the programming department to get something done for
me?" Most of the salesmen say, "I can’t do that." Because I represent
the other side. I think a lot of that has built up in a lot of industries.
Question 22
A of commentators say that - I’m talking about Italy, but I don’t think
it’s much different from the States - television these days is not really made for
the people anymore, it is made for the advertisers.
Answer
That may be quite true. Ultimately, people vote on whether they’re going to watch the
program. But clearly the programming types get together with the financial types from the
network and they say, "You know what? Our ratings are suffering in the 18 to 34
demographic. We need to get more 18 to 34-year olds." I’m not sure if it’s
as crass or as direct as this. But subconsciously. "OK. What kind of scripts, what
kind of programs would attract those kinds of people? Let’s commission some
scripts." So they commission a pilot, and say, "That’s a good program. It
appeals to the 18 to 34 -year olds. And I want that because there are so many advertisers
who invest on the basis of the ratings of 18 to 34 ." So I think that’s the kind
of influence and relationship that is has. The other thing in the US of late that a number
of networks have said: "Programming in general is very expensive, but people seem to
want to watch compilations of bloopers or news footage, reality-based programming,
let’s do a lot of this because we can save the production dollars, we’ll get the
higher ratings and the higher rights and we’ll make more of a profit." But in
the end it is the people. Television and the media in general are very democratic, because
if people ultimately don’t like what you are offering them, they switch off. They
don’t have to sit and watch the single channel on the market anymore. There are 52
other channels on their television they can get, or 150 other magazines that they can
read, so ultimately they vote with their feet, with their hands, with their remote
control.
Question 23
What is going to happen in the field of communication? What do you think are going to be
the media in the next 10 to 15 years that are going to go up and what do you think is
going to be coming down?
Answer
I think newspapers will be coming down. The reason for this is twofold. Firstly, a lot of
people use newspapers as a shopping list, whether it is classified ads, or looking at the
ads themselves, what’s on sale today. Given widespread distribution of the Internet
and of Internet-access devices- - little personal digital assistants, very high powered of
the kind we’ll get 5 years from now - if I want to see what the local supermarket has
on sale or what the latest houses for rent are, it’s a lot easier to distribute it on
a digital basis than on a hard-copy newspaper. Secondly, another problem newspapers are
going to face - and we’ve seen it in the United States - is that evening newspapers
have lost a lot of circulation over the last 10 to 15 years, and the reason for it is
simple. People are commuting longer hours now, so they are in their car or on the train or
on the bus, so they’re listening to the news on their radio sets. Or they are coming
home and they have 50 different channels, every one of which is doing news with a
different focus, headline news, in-depth news, summary news and so forth. There’s no
more need for that evening newspaper. So I think newspapers have a problem. Magazines
don’t have a problem if they recognize in the future that they are in the
information-entertainment business and not in the magazine business. How you physically
get the content that a publisher provides to you is almost immaterial. And if they keep
thinking: "We distribute things on dead trees", they’re going to lose,
because more and people are going to be hooked up electronically and digitally and,
ultimately, the truth is it’s the content they want. It is not the fact that they
want the dead trees or they want the electrons; they want the content. So as long as the
magazine publishers realize that, they will be in fine shape. By the way, the other big
change I think we are going to see in the future is that there will be more and more
emphasis on editorial quality, on content. Today in the old media world you are really in
one of three areas. You are either in production, which includes content - a journalist, a
writer, an actor and so forth - you are in distribution, or you are in the display end -
you manufacture the television set or the radio set. Given the widespread use of the
Internet and the widespread digitization, the first thing that happens is that there is
really no more of a difference from the display side, because PCs and TVs will one and the
same, so that becomes a commodity; distribution becomes immaterial. You are using the
Internet whether it is the Internet only, or the Internet as part of the distribution
chain that starts with an over-the-air broadcast bounced to a satellite down to a cable
head-end off the cable wires and onto the Internet, so that becomes a commodity. So the
only that is going to differentiate a content provider from the billions of other content
providers is the value of the content, which means that you have got to get smarter
people, better people, pay them more so they can deliver the kind of content that is the
only differentiation point in the future.
Question 24
So what is going up?
Answer
Definitely the Internet. But I firmly believe that the real value of the Internet in the
future is going to be as a distribution vehicle, and that television will continue to be a
dominant force in the information and entertainment business. I’ll give you another
one that’s going to go down: CDs and records. Nowadays you can go into Manhattan to a
music store and you won’t find any vinyl records, all you’ll find are CDs. Soon
all you’ll find are DVDs. Now and very much in the future you’ll turn to the
Internet, you’ll go to a music publisher or the website of your favorite group or
orchestra, and you’ll download onto your own write-once-read-many-times or multiply
writable, you know, CDs and DVDs and so forth. That’s going to create a problem, by
the way, for the music stores, for the actual retail distribution of music. I think they
will be the victim of this new age. I think television will continue to dominate, there is
no question about it, as a unique force in the entertainment and information industry,
but, again, part of the distribution is going to be on the Internet. I think magazines
will continue to be very strong, as along as, as I mentioned, that the publishers realize
that, whether it’s digital or analog, it’s the content people want. We’ll
give it to them any way they want.
Question 25
We have been talking about adverting and distribution and all things that have to do with
wealth in one way or another. How do you foresee the development of technologies in poorer
countries like Africa or some parts of the East or some parts of Russia which are very
much left behind now?
Answer
Ultimately, I think it is all inevitable, given in the long-term the continued growth of
economic strength because of globalization, because of, hopefully, the end of tribal
concerns about territory and so forth. There are always expectations, of course, but I
think on a long-term axis we’re in a period in human history where, I hope there is
less conflict and more focus on building the lifestyle of the unique cultures that
constitute the world. Given that, it is inevitable - maybe not in the short-term, but
certainly in the long-term, maybe in the mid-term - that the infrastructure will grow,
that people’s disposable incomes with grow sufficiently so that they can invest in
that which is necessary. But even if you go around the world now and look at the
"Third World", there are pockets of very high growth in terms of Internet
connectivity. For example, in Brazil. Three years ago I was in Brazil and made a speech
much as I gave to day, and people said to me, "Forget it; it’s not going to
happen; no Internet, no web connectivity." At that point the Brazilian government had
trade barriers. You couldn’t import computers, except at extremely high prices. There
were no Internet service providers. All the communications were tightly held by government
monopolies. If you go to Brazil today it’s a pre-implementation of computers. There
are many Internet service providers. Computer penetration is strong and growing and there
are 5 million Brazilians who are on-line. It would have been unthinkable 3 years ago. So
that’s happening around the world.
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