The magazine was referring to the growth of online blogs and similar Internet sites (of which there are now millions) and proposing that they are supplanting traditional media avenues as the principal way of communications in the future.

This is a superficial analysis. Blogs are an extension of what Bill Bernbach, the greatest advertising genius of the 20th century, described as the "most powerful medium of all", namely word of mouth.

Word of mouth was the greatest mass media when Bernbach wrote those words in 1967 and remains so 40 years later.

There is no doubt that the whole landscape of marketing communications is changing. Changing at a rate never seen before. The most overused term for this is "media fragmentation".

It's true that people have more media choices than ever before, be it more television stations, more newspapers, more radio, the Internet, mobile telephony or outdoor communications. But media fragmentation and the greater choice is not bringing with it a necessarily more informed consumer. Nor are the new media choices killing off the old media: they're adding to the total of mass media choices.

More fundamental is what this means for marketers. Because what is really happening is that the plethora of media choices means that we are evolving into a permission society. No longer can marketers lecture and harangue the consumer through a 30-second television commercial and a newspaper advertisement alone. They now have to invite the consumer to share the experience of their brand. And they had better make sure their brand delivers on its promise or the same word of mouth will kill it off faster than ever before.

In essence, this means that the consumer, the customer, is in the driving seat as never before. Which makes them more demanding, more scrutinising and critically, more disposed to switch brands than ever before.

Compounding this and making marketing choices ever harder is that with the explosion in choice comes the divergence of choice be - it in music, fashion, food, lifestyle. To illustrate: when I was a teenager my friends and I listened to the same music, the same bands. Today, I look at what is loaded onto my teenaged sons' iPods and their friends' iPods and discover much wider selection and a great divergence in their individual choices. These youngsters have invited different choices into their lives.

We are in the permission society. Yet marketers' first obligation is still to create demand for their products; get them known, understood, accepted and wanted. Just as ever. The underlying issue then is how to achieve this in the permission society? The solution is easy to define and hard to execute - which is why so many marketers are running scared.

The solution is better consumer understanding and marketing communications that straddle all the communications vehicles. The new mass media is now really mass media: so it's essential for marketers to use a single voice and talk a single idea, persuasively communicated across the channels.

For without this, the voice will not be heard. And permission will not be granted.

nThis is the first in a series by Marc Ingrouille, who is the Thailand president and CEO of McCann Worldgroup, the world's largest marketing communications group.

Marc Ingrouille

 Special to The Nation