the medium is the message

Marshall McLuhan famously coined the phrase “the medium is the message” back in 1964 with the publication of his book Understanding Media.

This idea has pretty well permeated society by now and the idea that the technology which carries a message affects the content of that message is mostly taken for granted nowadays.

But there is a nuance to the phrase as well which gets somewhat less attention.

The “medium” in the phrase is not just the technology of communication like television, social media, etc.

The “medium” includes the whole “environment of services,” as McLuhan puts it, which develop around the individual technology.

Thus the “medium” of automobiles is not just about increasing the speed of horse travel, it’s also about the roads, gas stations, mechanic shops, and even fast food establishments that exist as support and supplement to those automobiles.

If we take this broader view to our own content, we see that the “medium” of our content is not just about deciding whether to post on TikTok or LinkedIn.

Your whole business is the medium of your content.

So what message are you ultimately conveying?

the medium of McDonald’s

Yesterday I said that your business is the medium through which the message of all your content is ultimately filtered. So, to provide a more concrete example of this idea, let’s take a look at McDonald’s.

McDonald’s offers fast, cheap food at scale.

To do this, they have mastered the art of translating the technology of the assembly line to food preparation. But not only is the food offered in assembly line fashion, the entire franchise business model upon which McDonald’s is based is in essence an assembly line model.

Fast, cheap, repeatable.

This is the message of McDonald’s which is consistent throughout both their offering and their business.

If they started creating ads which were about slowing down and taking the time to smell the roses, so to speak, it would be incongruous with the entire medium (the business) through which the message was being conveyed.

So . . .

Is the message of your content consistent with the medium of your business?

If not, your message might be something other than what you think it is.

the message of McDonald’s

Yesterday as I was writing about the medium and the message of McDonald’s, I started to think about the message that McDonald’s tries to convey through its content, i.e. its marketing. We all know what it is:

I found this interesting because what it means is that the gist of McDonald’s marketing is based on an assertion of desirability, or “goodness.”

“I’m lovin’ it” roughly translates to: “see, it is good to eat.”

This seems ironic when put in context of our discussion yesterday, in which we discovered that the underlying message of McDonald’s business and offering is “fast and cheap.”

Now, when you see the words “fast” and “cheap” together, “good” usually follows, but only in reference to the classic trilemma:

Fast, cheap, or good. Pick two.

It’s as if McDonald’s knows that their “meta-message” is “fast and cheap,” so they use their marketing to fill in the “good” which is naturally assumed to be incompatible with the first two.

Notice though that McDonald’s rarely advertises directly for “fast and cheap” in their marketing. They don’t have to. It is the message which already permeates everything they do.

In other words, it’s what McDonald’s doesn’t say which turns out to be their real message.