BuzzFeed & the Rise of Post-Literate Media

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Every now and then I read something that’s a little alarming, disheartening, or discouraging as a copywriter working in a digital world. I’ve seen provocative headlines in LinkedIn group posts and on blogs and other sites questioning the validity of the copywriter in this day and age (“Are Copywriters Going Extinct?” / “Are Copywriters Being Replaced by Algorithms?”). I often scan these pieces, sometimes laughing at the ideas, because I don’t truly think we will ever live in a marketing world that needs no words. Or will we?

I was reading the recent issue of Fast Company (not online, mind you, but the actual paper magazine version, Luddite that I am).

Fast Company chose Buzzfeed as this year’s most innovative company – and for good reason. It’s a juggernaut. It is, as the article’s title states, “Shaking up media across the globe.” Consider these facts:

• Across all platforms where BuzzFeed now publishes, it generates 5 billion monthly views
• Half of these are from original video – a BuzzFeed platform or business line that did not even exist two years ago
• Reaching 80 million people in the US every month, traffic for BuzzFeed exceeds that of the New York Times
• In Q4 2014, 15% of its revenue came from video. In Q4 2015, that number jumped to 35%... and growing.

It’s this video growth that makes me a little nervous. Everyone knows video has exploded online and on mobile. I may not like it, but I get it. But even as video grows, it would be foolish to think that the need for copywriters would diminish, right? Someone has to create the ideas and messaging for the videos. And BuzzFeed’s “thing” has always been their compelling content: their never-ending, often-viral articles and lists, driven not only by images, but by words.

So fine. But then I read this quote from BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti, hidden in the latter part of the Fast Company piece. Focusing on the company’s global expansion, the author of the piece, Noah Robischon, wrote of Peretti: 

“channeling Marshall McCluhan, (he) believes Buzzfeed will succeed globally because of the rise of post-literate media.” 

And here’s what Peretti said: 

“Angry Birds, Candy Crush, Minions, Transformers. Anywhere the dialogue is less important than the special effects. Or a Nicki Minaj video. There are things that you don’t really need language to appreciate.”

While he may have been simply referring to the need to cross language barriers as BuzzFeed goes global, to “tell stories” through pictures more than words, which need to be translated from culture to culture, there’s a subtext that disturbs me. When the global success of one of the world’s hottest, fastest-growing platforms depends on post-literate media and things you don’t need language to appreciate, my copywriter radar goes off. It’s not happening overnight. It may not happen in my lifetime. But the role of a copywriter is already shifting, evolving at a rapid pace. This little insight about where Buzzfeed is heading indicates that our role may be shifting or diminishing even further in the days ahead.

In a 2012 piecepublished on Salon.com, Lewis Lapham wrote about the late Marshall McCluhan and gave some great summaries of some of McCluhan’s thinking on media and a post-literate society. Here’s what Lapham wrote: 

 “…McLuhan notic(ed)… the presence of 'an acoustic world,' one with 'no continuity, no homogeneity, no connections, no stasis,' a new 'information environment of which humanity has no experience whatever.' He published “Understanding Media” in 1964, proceeding from the premise that 'we become what we behold,' that 'we shape our tools, and thereafter our tools shape us.'

We become what we behold. As texting and emailing have given “permission” to write in a new, abbreviated, and too-often God-awful form of English, online and mobile video is giving way to what very well may be a diminishing need for or interest in words. To some extent, I see it in my work every week in digital media. “Less copy, more visual” is the cry of the day when it comes to creating banner ads, emails, or any form of digital marketing. Appeal to the eyes, not the mind.

I hate to think of a world that rolls on with an excess of visual stimulation and a failing appreciation for the beauty of language. But we shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us.