One of the most significant impact the internet is having on the world of communication is that it is blurring the boundaries of different communication disciplines.

As the 20th century progressed, communication disciplines were becoming increasingly specialised.  Marketing, advertising, PR, corporate communication, branding and product positioning could all be done by separate agencies who were all excellent at what they were doing.  Along come the internet.  You post a story of a new product launch.  The PR team deals with the press release, the ad agency does a nice visual with a tagline.  But suddenly a group of bloggers have found a problem with your product.  They start talking about it.  But the ad campaign is already in motion, the ad agency has done all the media booking through the media buying agency (which sits in London and is oblivious to your current crisis).  The CEO wants to make a statement, but the new homepage with the product microsite completely contradicts everything he wants to say or should say and the IT guys say it's a little tricky to change all this without doing some additional testing.  Not to mention the countries where the product is not yet launched which are gearing up to introduce legislation to ban/protect the consumer against the defect that was found.

This is the new reality we live in.  Agencies, departments must be integrated and nowhere is this more visible then on a website.  We tell our clients that they need to think about communication as business exercise, and that they need to pull together a team that can work in a coherent way, connecting, sharing information and adapting to change.  I have heard of a few (rare) companies that are trying to do this, but most are content to just wait as change seems even more painful that waiting for change to be brought upon them by a crisis.

Have you ever felt the blurring of the boundaries and the disconnected response?  How did you deal with it? 

Phil