Digital Media And Marketing Is A Game Of Thrones

In the digital strategy training sessions I run, I try to use simple language and lively analogies to describe the complex world of digital media and marketing.

One comparison I draw is between the digital macro-environment and the legendary TV series Game of Thrones (GoT).  The aim is to help people see beyond the impenetrable wall of data centres, techno-jargon, capital risk and dystopian views of robotic horizons, and that the digital technology industry is just like any other; full of fallible humans, political battles, and egomaniacal plans.  Hopefully, bringing the issues alive for those whom the discussion of bits and bytes is a non-starter.

In case you haven’t seen it, GoT was an epic fantasy TV series about nine Great Houses – as in aristocratic families - competing to be top dogs, and take their rightful control of the Iron Throne in the fictional continent of Westeros.  The result is a convoluted, brutal non-stop war full of would-be kings, powerplay-plots, and bloodshed on a tectonic level.

The global digital marketing ecosystem is so vast, sprawling, dynamic and politically complex that a point-of-comparison...