It cannot have escaped many people’s notice, that a hitherto unknown pastor in Florida found himself the centre of an international furore around his threat to burn copies of the Koran on the anniversary of 9/11. Putting to one side the fact that this deed has been condemned almost universally by politicians and religious leaders (of all hues) around the world; it’s interesting to consider the role of the internet in this, and the implications.

We know that the world is increasingly a smaller place (if that’s not a contradiction), more and more of us are part of an ‘always on’ global network across which news and our reaction to it can spread like wildfire, where there were once geographical boundaries. People and events can become famous and infamous (woman throws kitten in bin) as fast as you can say Youtube.

One question is how quickly will these worldwide phenomena (and maybe can we replace this with ‘advertising campaign’) become tomorrow’s chip paper?

Faris Yakob raised the issue of ‘low latency culture’, which perhaps gives us some pointers. The hypothesis is that the faster ideas spread and we engage with them, the faster that engagement is likely to decay. This is being driven by continual advances made in the speed of communication. He compares the long popularity of tunes when they were distributed as sheet music with today’s digital download charts, where the top selling tunes are just those which came out last week. And, he points out, that this has some academic basis:

“A recent study by Jonah Berger from the University of Pennsylvania and Gaël Le Mens from Stanford University and Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona have investigated why things become unpopular and shows that fast cultural adoption correlates to equally rapid falling from favour”.

The term that helps describe this comes from the gaming world. It refers to the lag between a cause and effect, between the moment when something is initiated and the moment one of the effects, can be perceived. The lower the latency, the faster the distant computer responds, the faster you see an effect and can respond and so on. This is a good thing –i t means you don't get killed in the game because your character didn't move when you told him to.

Yakob argues that as communication technologies become faster and more pervasive, the latency of culture is actually decreasing, and is arguably approaching zero.

What does this mean for advertising and marketing?

Decreasing cultural latency means that information spreads so quickly that the rate of spread itself becomes one of the key aspect of the communication strategy. It also raises the challenge of how can we maintain momentum?

Arguably one strong candidate here is what is currently termed as Social Media. (To what extent this is a medium is open to debate, and the subject of another post – let’s just say, is it a great idea to interrupt people talking to each other, in order to get them to say good things about you?).

Brands and agencies are increasingly operating in a culture that demands a fast response (whether in terms of customer service or messaging). The speed of advertising will need to increase. Lots of small ideas that work together to create and maintain the brand (see John Grant’s brand molecules) may well replace (or at least compliment/reflect) the ‘big idea’ and give it longevity – e.g. Old Spice’s culture hack).

With increasing cultural decay rates, not only will more things need to be created more often, we will need to be more even agile with our use of media, and consider the different roles each can play in launching an idea, or maintaining its saliency in an environment where consumers are becoming ever more confident in their ability to engage with or ignore brands and their messages.

As for Pastor Jones, let’s hope the speed of his fame correlates directly to the speed of his return to anonymity.