Drapeau's Five Cultural Trends

An earlier tweet that now gets some more in-depth review. Mark Drapeau is one of the public sector engagement folks at Microsoft. Not that long ago, we'd have ascribed to him the more hip title of a chief evangelist. He wrote a solid essay on the Five Cultural Trends Shaping Business Communications and Public Service at the end of October. Many of you saw my retweet of CoSIDA News on this.

He skewers the public sector (read: academica/athletics/government) with some pretty strong points.

Large organizations are often out of touch with such changes in the culture.

In his five areas, he hits one that bears closer observation for the college sports world: "Nobodies as Influencers." While Drapeau is thinking very specifically of The Situation and other made for reality stars that lack "talent" as we may have previously defined as important for celebrity, I'm reading something else.

Hearkening back to our general lack of control over our brand reputations, it is hundreds of similar "nobodies" who by virtue of the extraordinary low cost of entry into media that become some our most important clients for information. As Drapeau wrote:

Everybody has the potential to be a celebrity and therefore everyone is a potential influencer.

I found one of the comments on Drapeau's post one of the most important items, and it reminded me about who increasingly is the person of trust within one's life.

We trust the 'nobody' down the street more than any superjock making a gazillion dollars a year because it seems more genuine.