Berens: Let's move towards interactive, because that is our stock and trade here at iMedia. One of the questions that we have perennially….we are all internet hipsters, and we have RSS readers, and we are on Instant Messenger all the time. So, the big question is always, on the global marketing scale, what is real? What is becoming real? What isn't real? And so, since you have your head wrapped around the entirety of integrated marketing…
Schultz: I would go back to what you said earlier. We don't really know what is going on in interactive, because we tend to look only at the U.S. It is developing so rapidly in the rest of the world and we tend to ignore it, and tend to push it back off to the side.
I continue to hear people in the U.S. talk about, "Well, Gee, we have got to bring interactive into the mix." In China and in Japan and in Korea, they start with interactive. And, then they say, "Well, do we need to add some of the other media and bring that into the mix?"
Berens: Why do you think they start with interactive? That is a vision of heaven to us, but why?
Schultz: I think that what they see is, "We have got a fairly young population, and for the young people [the internet] is what they do, that is how they do it, and that is the way they live." Essentially, what they are saying is, "What we want to do is capture the young…we are not as concerned about the old people," as we are in the U.S. We still spend an awful lot of time talking about Baby Boomers in the U.S. But if you look at China, Japan, Taiwan and Korea, they are all looking at the young people, and that [the internet] is what the young people are doing. That is how you get to them.
Berens: Get them early…and get them often.
Schultz: The thing that I see every day in a classroom here is that the group of students we have sitting in this classroom are unlike most of the rest of the people in the world, because the rest of the people in the market… they have grown up with this stuff.
Berens: You mean the chronic cell phone and Blackberry use?
Schultz: Yes. I have had a couple of experiences, (and this has been confirmed by the people in other faculty and classrooms), where you come in and you make a few statements. The students are sitting there -- and, of course, we have smart classrooms -- so, they are all hooked up to the internet. You make a statement, "Well, 38 percent of the so-and-so did such-and-such." The students will immediately Google it and come back and say, "No, I don't think that is right. I have got a number here that says it is 42." So, it is instant information that creates dialogues in the classroom today, which never used to happen.
Berens: Does that raise the caliber of the discussion?
Schultz: It raises the caliber of the discussion, and it scares the faculty to death.
Berens: Sure.
Schultz: Because here you are, in some cases, quoting two-year-old figures, and the students are sitting there Googling stuff and getting data that was reported the day before yesterday. So, it has changed, I think radically, the way we think about information: what it is; the speed with which you can access it; and how people are using it. Because these kids think absolutely nothing about searching: "Oh, I will Google that... Tell me anything, and I will take a look at it." Or, "I will go look at it, and I will ask you some questions." That sort of thing. It is a radically different classroom experience.
Berens: So, the old marketing way of talking about the consumer was essentially equivalent to the way hunters talk about deer…
Schultz: Exactly, exactly. We will go track them down.
Berens: Right, we will target them.
Schultz: And set some traps for them -- that sort of thing. You cannot do that anymore. That doesn't work anymore.
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