2.2 The medium is the message

Questions of where the customers are, and how to reach them, today often revolve around digital media. There are those who suggest content is less important than the medium of exchange, most famously Canadian philosopher of communications Marshall McLuhan (1967) who suggested ‘the medium is the message’.

McLuhan argued that the medium of exchange – how we exchange information between each other – is more important than the content of those messages. For example, he suggests the act of communicating and the way it structures our communication, our thoughts and discourses is more important than anything a person might write or read.