My word, those Top-Down-Management-Teams have really been at it this week!

First there was the fiasco of BSkyB and Virgin Media having a fight and then arbitrarily removing channels from the unsuspecting viewers, and then along comes the Supermarkets/contaminated petrol disaster!

How can the real world trust anything emanating from Top-Down-Big Business-Management?

It now appears that the supermarkets "were warned about problems with petrol a week ago"!

Fuel suppliers were accused of failing to come clean over problems with unleaded petrol that has damaged thousands of cars.

The Director of the Petrol Retailers' Association said that he was "deeply suspicious" about the silence of the companies involved!

England's largest retailer, Tesco, refuses to make any comment!

Hey, if they awarded Oscars to Companies for the best Top-Down-Management-Team, it would be a fight between Tesco; BSkyB and Virgin Media right now!

Although don't hold your breath, there is bound to be several more prime competitors very soon.

We had some meeting meetings with Tesco Management some time ago, they were most proud of their "Club Card" programme, but gave scant, if any, evidence that their Club was regarded as nothing more than a Top-Down-Management-Team vehicle to tell the members "Don't do as I do...do as I say...buy more of my products".

We live in an over informed society and people everywhere are turning away from the commercial information spewed out from all media, it is of no interest or relevance to them at all! Probably more importantly. your customers don't trust you or the media very much-if at all!

However, you can bet your bottom dollar that in the very near future all the guilty parties of both these little, unpleasant episodes will be spending fortunes on wasteful advertising campaigns telling a totally uninterested society just how good they are...but they will not be believed!

Our over informed society will, instead, turn to the Web where e-mails will be shared with people expressing utter disgust at the way they've been treated, and also creating their own Blogsites to express their true feelings. And One-way- Top-Down-Management advertising campaigns will be utterly ignored, so hundreds of thousands of pounds will be totally wasted and the public mistrust of Politicians and Big Business continues apace.

Here you might say, "Why drag Politics into this"?

Well, recently even more evidence of Politicians contempt for the very people who voted them into power emerged.

Many MPs are supporting a Private Members Bill, which seeks to exempt them, their staff and offices from the requirements of the Freedom of Information Act. They claim that this is to protect their constituents' confidentially.

In reality the main purpose is to prevent the public from having knowledge of the sums claimed from the public purse on travel, housing, office

and other expenses.

So here is an example of Governance-by-Top-Down-Politicians who simply try their hardest to stop you and me learning about what they are doing with our money whilst, at the same time, enriching themselves at the expense of the general population!

We produced some interactive programmes for Politicians both in Australia and the UK, the results were quite astounding but it was interesting to see how individual politicians tried to bend the two-way conversations to their own way!

Recently MPs voted themselves a huge top up to their pension fund, at the same time that many thousands of ordinary people have lost their pension entitlement!

To day, among consumers, a major change is underway, best summed up by "We are immune to advertising. Just forget it"

That was said a few years ago as part of the Cluetrain Manifesto, true then, even truer to day!

Elvis said it best: "We can't go on together with suspicious minds."

Companies need to come down from their Ivory Towers and talk to the people with whom they hope to create relationships.

Public Relations does not relate to the public. Companies are deeply afraid of their markets.

And most certainly Clients want to get away from one-way-passive-advertising, because with all this mistrust around, your just wasting your money whilst, at the same time, making the advertising agencies rich...for why?

What you really need to do right now is commence interactive dialogue with your customers. Yes, we know that your current agency is talking about digital, interaction and all the other glitz they like to espouse...ignore it, they know nothing because it is not in their best interests to really understand what is happening in the real world.

And they certainly do not understand the word interaction!

And that word is the key to your future success!

So lets examine that word interaction a little more:

Interaction can be defined simply as straightforward communication between two parties.

Presently we are in danger of losing the real meaning of interaction, as we tend to focus discussions on the emerging technologies and neglect the communication process itself.

With an understanding of the real meaning of Interactive Communication, existing media can be made interactive, and subsequently far more cost effective.

Interactive Marketing Communication turns passive advertising into active advertising and actually alters behaviour during the communication and learning process

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