The model for business communications has shifted from passive to proactive to interactive, from broadcasting to narrowcasting to micromarketing. Information technology provides speed, flexibility and reach, which opens up unprecedented avenues for communications. Faced with such far-reaching changes, corporations...are finding that they have to revamp their communications programs completely or get knocked down in the aftershocks...It seems to me, when you cut through the hype, that the interactive media primarily offer corporations a new means of talking with people—but they demand that they learn to talk with people in a new way. The corporation has to climb down from the speaker's platform of the old, one-way communications model, mingle with the audience and provide people with something extra for their time and attention. As one expert put it, when you're connected, "you're onstage—so do something—fast!" Not exactly most corporations' cup of tea.
– Alan Siegel
