In his new book, “Always On,” Christopher Vollmer, Vice President in Booz & Company’s Global Consumer and Media Practice, writes that consumers have become 24/7 multi-taskers in terms of their media consumption and buying habits.

He might have titled his presentation to LSB’s Brandworks University 2008, “Always Behind,” because that’s where he sees the marketing industry – perpetually scrambling to catch up with the moving target that is today’s consumer. Vollmer predicts the future will only get more complicated.

• Media markets are continuing to fragment. The average American home received 104 TV channels in 2006.
• Consumers are shifting their media usage toward more interactivity and control.
• Consumers are spending more time on smaller Web sites and less time on portals. The number of Web sites has grown 500 percent in the past few years.
• Blogs and social networks are the fastest growing segments of the Internet.
• Americans are embracing digital media: 97 percent of homes have cell phones, 75 percent have digital TV and 70 percent are hooked up to broadband.

And yet, most brand advertisers are spending less than 10 percent of their budgets online.

It’s not that marketers are sitting on their hands. Vollmer credits the ad industry with “an enormous amount of innovation.” But “the pace is relentless,” he warned, and the coming changes will affect some of the fundamental relationships, measurements and skill sets that have anchored the marketing and advertising professions for the past half-century.

Here’s what Vollmer says is on the horizon, based on Booz & Company’s “Marketing and Media Ecosystem 2010” study, which was conducted in cooperation with the Interactive Advertising Bureau, Association of National Advertisers, and the American Association of Advertising Agencies:

• The consumer is becoming the medium. Consumers are saying that the Internet and word of mouth are the most important influencers of purchasing decisions. They want to be in communication with each other in communities that reflect their passion points. Online word of mouth enables consumers to quickly get to information they find relevant. Getting information into the hands of consumers and making it easy for them to pass it along to friends or social networks will be more important than traditional top-down communications. Communications are shifting toward conversational two-way interactive platforms that are digital and mobile.
• In the digital environment, a few highly interested, committed and viral consumers will be key influencers of consumer behavior. Whether you like it or not, they will post about your brand and act as multipliers of your message. Other consumers will rely on them for unbiased information, good or bad. Marketing leaders will have to identify those people and learn how to take advantage of an advocacy driven consumer environment.
• Media companies will change from being aggregators of audiences to being the interpreters and providers of consumer insights. Media companies may move into areas formerly dominated by ad agencies and in-house marketing departments, including campaign development, idea generation, consumer insights and ROI tracking. In some cases, they will actually take over the role of advertising agencies, as Meredith has done with Kraft Foods.
• Metrics need to catch up with practice. “There is a huge metrics conundrum,” Vollmer admitted. “The old model has the advantage of measurability and history and learning about what works. New media people are still learning.” Someone will have to find a way to standardize the new metrics and integrate them with the old models so there can be a unified system that senior executives and financial people can have faith in.

Based in New York, Christopher Vollmer leads Booz & Company’s North American Media and Entertainment team, focusing on advertising and consumer marketing in the media, entertainment, and consumer products industries.