The printing press dates back to 1440. Before that hand-written manuscripts were only for the privileged few.
The press did more than make mass communications possible. It was one of the foundations of modern democracy. The press enabled people to share what they knew and discovered, to build on each other’s work. They didn’t have to start from scratch each time.
New ways of learning. New ways of thinking. New thoughts. Entirely new disciplines were born: geography, astronomy, botany, anatomy, mathematics.
Those new freedoms to think, learn, experiment and explore all challenged the political, economic and social status quo. They undermined the dominance of the church and enabled new socio-political structures. They gave rise to the city state and to secular society.
More than five hundred years before we were born the printing press enabled the Reformation and the Renaissance. It changed everything that shapes our world now.
And it is happening again.
The digital revolution does more than put the printing press in the hands of every single individual. Everyone now has the power to create, to challenge, to change. To reach, engage, and persuade.
The digital revolution has created the toughest, most diverse, most demanding and most critical group of different audiences the world has ever known.
These are often the very same audiences that most brands and businesses want or need to reach and influence, to get alongside and get to understand them.
These audiences, and the people in them, are the ones that we help clients to understand, reach and engage.