Two events happened in the last fortnight that made me reflect more on this. The first was Apple’s power move on Facebook and Google. The second one was here in India – FDI regulations affecting Amazon and Flipkart. Both were shows of influence, and involved distribution.

It made me realise that the shelf life of this entire distribution-product-brand cycle is shrinking. Disruption is happening far before organisations can take advantage of wins at a previous level.

Distribution: Let’s take Apple as an example. While it might be powerful ostensibly on the strength of its products, I believe the play is as much distribution – App Store. The recent example (above) is proof of that strength. In fact, all the GAFA battles have the same theme. Distribution strength goes hand in hand with exclusive touchpoints, which serve as a medium to deliver and build more trust.

But that distribution has been disrupted! Spotify, and now Netflix and Epic (Fortnite) are examples of companies which are moving out of paying the App/Play Stores’ toll tax.

Product: The moves by Spotify/Netflix/Epic are all on the strength of the product. I am not really clued in on the music and game contexts, so let me take the Netflix narrative forward. Apple and Amazon recognise this threat, the latter is already showing examples of trying to play catch up using Prime. Amazon can indeed subsidise this play for longer, thanks to advantages accrued by other plays primarily in distribution. Netflix, on the other hand, is continually trying to keep its head above water. But despite no original advantages in distribution, it continues to be the dominant player in the domain. Just a small note on music though – in the first weekend of February, Marshmello’s concert on Fortnite had 10 million folks tuning in. Around the same time, Superbowl had a 98.2 million viewership. Tencent holds a 40% stake in Fortnite.

A more visible play can be found in the other kind of product – physical ones to extend and enhance the ecosystem. Add “smart” to watches, speakers, home, car, and you get the picture of what’s happening. The goal is ecosystem stickiness. But I cannot remember a non-GAFA product here that scores on differentiation and success.

The best examples of product disruption, however, would be direct-to-consumer (DTC) brands. The rush from CPG majors to acquire them is proof of that. More on DTC in a bit.

Brand: This is the final act, and the prize is consumer trust. By bringing the hammer down on Facebook and Google, Apple (again) underlined its worldview on privacy. As I have written before, a worldview is bound to be polarising. As a non-fan, I felt it was extreme. An Apple follower would applaud it.

On the strength of its product, Netflix is also a brand with a worldview. It is too early for me to see how this will pan out. So, at the risk of an incoherent narrative, let me switch tracks here.

DTC. The number of  brands that have been built on the back of a differentiated product is rising. Bonobos, Warby Parker, Casper have all built their brands on the internet, based on pricing and sometimes, a stated social mission. They have then extended themselves offline, thereby smartly disrupting product and distribution in one fell swoop.

The overall trend can be seen in many places. For instance, IMO, AirBnB has disrupted all three aspects above. Maybe Tesla too.

What next? It is still early stages. But my thinking is this – if I take the original frame and apply it to the consumer market at large, the internet worked as a distribution disruptor. In the early stages, it was truly a medium that surfaced the long tail. In a time-scarce world, they increasingly delivered choice, convenience and consumption seamlessness. Those who cracked this early eliminated offline incumbents and became the new gatekeepers. Amazon for products, Facebook for social connections, Google for well, anything, and even Netflix – for content. Through some great bundling of distribution, product and brand, they built consumer trust for an ecosystem. From a business perspective, the strength of that bundling is what lowers acquisition cost and increases lifetime value.

But as Netflix and DTC have shown, the shelf life of that advantage is already proving to be small. Apply the distribution-product-brand frame to a newspaper chain (vs HuffPo) /television network (vs Netflix) /education institution (vs Coursera) /restaurant chain (vs Swiggy) and so on, and the shelf life they enjoyed, and you’ll see what I mean. Now, the chokehold can be broken faster.

As the internet matures, choice, convenience and consumption seamlessness will be taken for granted. In fact, as Scott Galloway points out, in a world of infinite choice, a consumer would prefer confidence in the (fewer) choices presented to them. Ecosystems of distribution-product-brand will be built faster and likely not in that order either. In a post-internet era, victory looks possible only if all three aspects are secured simultaneously, and continuously.

Surekha, for example, mentioned that she was okay if her tweet was reproduced, so long as it was attributed to her. I am ambivalent about my stance since I have at least a couple of problems, one practical, one theoretical (for now) – first, the context of it, where will it be used and in what context? I even stretched the thought to whether I can choose who gets to RT me and which tweets. Second, what if someone has a revenue model out of aggregating tweets, and that’s not just MSM I’m talking about, its online publications, blogs and blog aggregators too.

The first one is about privacy. When I share a status/tweet on FB/Twitter, I do it on the assumption that its shared in a relatively closed network, and in a context. It would be ironic if the content creators of new media to say they’ve been mistweeted. With Facebook’s  changes in policy at the end of last year, the definition of privacy is actually up in the air. No, actually Facebook is deciding what is privacy and that it is over. And to think that privacy was the cited reason for the non-portability of the data on the network!! There are two wonderful posts on the subject which you really should read – one by danah boyd and the other by nicholas carr. On a tangent, this post onThe Inquisitr about how (in the context of customer service), in spite of the web making every person a media outlet, the concerned corporations would choose to listen to only a few. The fear being whether rules of personal privacy would also be decided by a select few. Are we talking the Schmidt language here – “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place”. Oh, did I take that out of context? Heh.

The second one (about the revenue model) made me think about media and brands and intrigued me because it is linked to privacy, and more so, because I sensed a paradox – between the individual’s notion of privacy and how we expect a media outlet/brand to be dictated by us on how and where its content is used. Yes, they are not individuals. But even if news per se is not owned by anyone, isn’t the particular form in which it is carried owned? The brand, is owned. The way the web is evolving, do they have a choice about where they are seen and who talks about them? This is not a debate on whether it makes sense for them to be private/public, but my point is about choice. When we start thinking about ‘linking’ as a right, just because the web economy is supposedly supported by it, I get the feeling I mentioned earlier – will a (new) powerful few dictate how it plays out? Privacy and control – they cross paths a lot. What really are we creating?

until next time, protocols