We all know media's past. I've been thinking for a while about our role in creating a better future... bear with me here. I haven't got any flashy videos or pictures to go with this, but its important. Well, it is to me...I'd like to know what you think...

In the past couple of decades, if we're honest, the discipline of media has been a fairly crude and un-sexy business, a very linear transactional business really. To most people on the street media is invisible, its an intangible plural noun, you wouldn't think that media could be someone's job. Any so it was...If you mentioned to someone five years ago that you worked in media they'd assume you were a newspaper journalist. Its always been tough to articulate what we do for a living, I've especially struggled when trying to articulate what we do in a way that also makes it sounds as if it does make some contribution to the world. 

Though to this day I still have relatives ask me "are you still selling advertising then..?" We've never really had a role or purpose in the world to most people, we've been a rather underground industry, existing in a damp mossy crack in the wall between advertising executives and salesmen.  

Our contribution to the world so far has been pretty limited. Choosing TV spots or planning a print schedule (and the numerous lunches and parties that might have to be savoured on a path to making such decisions) had a fairly limited positive knock-on effect to society right? Real critics will accuse us of being experts at littering the world with branding... 

Certainly one big contribution we can claim is that the digital revolution simply would not have happened with the same gusto without brand funding. Most of the recent digital innovation needed to be fueled by advertising revenue models (and web users duly gave their acceptance of this as the rules of engagement). Whilst other revenue models have been tried, advertising seems to be the most reliable way of funding a digital business and that in turn has funded the shift of media from being channels to media being platforms, tools and experiences. 

Today the definition of media has changed. People don't consume media (this elusive intangible plural noun) in a passive way anymore. Today people live in media, spend most of their free time in media, maintain their identities in media, conduct their lives and relationships in media and even create new media themselves. They take something, change it, pass it on, give it more context and therefore more meaning, making it more effective at reaching the right people. The right thing to the right person, in the right context at the right time...Hmmmm.... 

Hey, that's our job..!

Our role as media experts has therefore fundamentally shifted from being a job of processing to a job of creating. Using brand budgets, we are providing the funding for many new digital initiatives, which of course have to primarily work for that client's business, but they also build upon previous innovations and take digital media to unprecedented heights and create some mind-blowing possibilities. Many of the startling innovations that are happening simply wouldn't be there if innovators didn't see there might be a commercial application which could be funded by advertising dollars. Marketing budgets are, by their existence, encouraging a wealth of digital creation. It is truly wonderful to be a part of. 

But creation alone isn't enough. Production is not the end of the process and the end of responsibility. The power to create that comes from vast marketing budgets has to be used responsibly as well as for commercial gain. Between us all, marketers, agencies and media and content owners, we are creating new movements, new platforms, new behaviours, new ways for people to communicate and share, new experiences. In the past if we chose spend thousands to put an ad in the Telegraph newspaper rather than the Times newspaper it made very little difference to anyone. Today that is very different. We are funding much of the world's communications innovation - our decisions can now have a sociological impact too. 

So, this is all great. We now have even more complicated jobs which we won't be able to articulate to our relatives over Christmas... 

Seriously though, with this influence must come a responsibility to ensure that we are creating the right things, movements with legacy, platforms which are sustainable, communications which give back to people and add value to individuals and communities wherever possible. 

This will be the first in a series of posts I want to make, to start exploring how we can ensure that the power we wield is being used for a positive purpose alongside its commercial purpose.