Editorial
The Gist
- Ephemeral vs. enduring. Digital convenience often trades away stability and ownership — experiences need depth to create real loyalty.
- Design for presence. Just as LPs and landlines demanded attention, CX must encourage intentional engagement, not constant distraction.
- Shared experiences matter. Linear TV reminds us: collective, synchronized moments can build stronger cultural and customer bonds.
- Substance drives trust. Wired headphones and physical media show that reliability and permanence anchor customer confidence.
- Progress redefined. For CX leaders, innovation isn’t just speed or novelty — it’s creating experiences with weight, form and staying power.
Editor's note: Progress isn’t always about speed, scale or novelty. Sometimes it’s about form, stability and permanence. Just as LPs, landlines and broadcast TV reintroduced presence and tangibility, customer experiences gain power when they’re anchored in trust, reliability and shared meaning. The takeaway: don’t chase endless innovation for its own sake — build experiences that last.
I remember the earliest days, when all music existed as ephemeral streams. Songs flickered into existence only to vanish the next moment, compressed into digital files that were neat but invisible. Playlists were bound by bandwidth; libraries were not yours, but leased from distant servers. Headphones were wireless, always dependent on batteries, always prone to dropouts.
The phones in our pockets were mobile, constantly tracking, endlessly buzzing, fragmenting attention. Television existed only on-demand, with infinite channels tailored to individual tastes but no shared experience to bind us together. We were told this was modernity — instantaneous, borderless, infinite — and for a moment, it seemed magical.
Editor's note: CX and marketing lesson: Experiences that last require more than novelty. Just as analog inventions replaced fleeting digital streams with presence and embodiment, CX strategies should focus on building depth and permanence in customer relationships, not just quick wins.
Table of Contents
- From Ephemerality to Embodiment
- The Return of Wired Certainty
- Landlines and the Art of Intentional Connection
- Linear Broadcast as Shared Culture
- Cinema and the Permanence of Ownership
- A New Principle of Progress
From Ephemerality to Embodiment
And then came the inventions that transformed life into something much more exciting.
First, the LP. Music ingeniously pressed into actual physical grooves, delivering amplified vibrations capable of filling a room. Unlike digital files, the LP demanded presence, care, attention. You set the needle, felt the vibration and heard the space between notes. Sound gained body. Listening became an act of full engagement — both hands on deck — a dialogue between performer, medium and listener.
And when the listening was done, you gently lifted the glistening disk with the palm of your hands, vertically and carefully slipped it into the homepocket and into the holder and back to stand with its kin.
Editor's note: CX and marketing lesson: Reliability matters as much as innovation. Wired headphones remind us that customers value stability and quality. In CX, dependable performance and seamless delivery are often the true differentiators over flashy features.
The Return of Wired Certainty
Headphones, too, were upgraded. Wireless had given us a freedom of sorts, but we never really understood freedom from what. Because that freedom tethered us to batteries and outlets and unstable connections and unwelcome interferences. The newly invented wired headphones in contrast delivered reliability and robust fidelity previously impossible.
Every note arrived uncompressed, every beat intact, without interruption. The wire itself became a conduit of certainty, a simple physical path for an experience previously dependent on fragile signals. Progress, in this case, meant grounding music in stability. Impressively simple elegance.
Editor's note: CX and marketing lesson: Intentional engagement is more powerful than constant availability. Landlines demanded presence and choice, just as CX should encourage thoughtful, meaningful interactions instead of overwhelming customers with endless notifications.
Related Article: Customer Loyalty in the Experience Economy — the CMO's Perspective
Landlines and the Art of Intentional Connection
Phones also underwent a quiet revolution. Mobile phones had placed the world in our pockets, but they had also fragmented our attention, had eroded presence, and had intruded into every moment. The newly invented landline was a masterstroke leap forward. Here was a phone designed for stability, for intentionality, for connection on human terms rather than constant surveillance.
Placing a call required choice; answering a call demanded presence. Yes, you may reach me, but only here, there and there. Otherwise, I am somewhere else, out of reach and out of touch, un-botherable. And when you do call in one of the designated places, I may or may not pick up, and if I don’t, it’s nothing personal, because the landline does not tell me who is calling.
Editor's note: CX and marketing lesson: Shared moments create stronger bonds. Linear broadcast shows how collective experiences can generate anticipation and community. For brands, designing synchronized, communal experiences can foster loyalty beyond personalization alone.
Linear Broadcast as Shared Culture
Television, too, was radically reimagined — and once again, the move was breathtaking. The old era had delivered personalization and choice: how else could it be delivered; and yet it had left us atomized, with no shared temporal anchor. We lived in our own self-enclosed bubbles and we binged alone.
Then out of nowhere, linear broadcast burst into the scene — another marvel of imagination — and established a rhythm to viewing. Scheduled programs gathered millions at the same time, creating collective attention, shared anticipation and cultural moments that could not be arbitrarily skipped or erased. It felt weird and wonderful to know that what you were watching was being watched by millions of people at the same time. Television gained a social dimension it had never had and with it, a sense of public life.
Editor's note: CX and marketing lesson: Ownership builds trust and advocacy. Just as physical media gave people control over their films, brands that give customers true ownership — whether of their data, their journey, or their loyalty — will create longer-lasting relationships.
Related Article: Customer Journey Mapping: A How-To Guide
Cinema and the Permanence of Ownership
The revolution extended to cinema as well. Movies no longer existed only as transient streams, dependent on the mercy of servers and algorithms. Physical media — discs and collections — placed ownership back into human hands. A film could be preserved, curated, revisited. The act of watching became deliberate, permanent, and resilient against the impermanence of digital licensing. Culture, at last, had a body.
Marketing and CX Takeaways
This table summarizes the big marketing and CX lessons from each section.
| Theme | Lesson for CX and Marketing |
|---|---|
| From ephemerality to embodiment | Move beyond fleeting digital convenience — design experiences that create depth, permanence, and customer loyalty. |
| The LP: music with weight and presence | Presence and attention matter. CX should encourage deliberate, full engagement instead of passive consumption. |
| The return of wired certainty | Stability and reliability build trust. Consistent performance can be a greater differentiator than novelty. |
| Landlines and intentional connection | Intentional, meaningful engagement creates stronger bonds than constant availability or push notifications. |
| Linear broadcast as shared culture | Shared, synchronized experiences create community and cultural resonance that personalization alone cannot. |
| Cinema and permanence of ownership | Ownership builds advocacy. Giving customers control over data, journeys, or loyalty fosters lasting trust. |
| A new principle of progress | Progress isn’t speed or infinite choice — it’s substance, stability and experiences with staying power. |
A New Principle of Progress
In all these domains — music, cinema, reading, communication, and broadcast media — the innovations share a common principle: tangibility, stability, permanence. Analog grooves, wires, discs, books, landlines, linear programming — these are not returns to some past, but brand new creations conceived after the era of the digital, the wireless, and the cloud. They represent progress that adds depth, solidity, and fidelity to human experience.
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We call the first era modern, but in retrospect, it was provisional, ephemeral, contingent. It was freedom without stability, access without ownership, presence without depth. What these new physically embedded inventions deliver is not merely novelty, but embodiment: music with resonance, images with durability, words with permanence, connections with intent, movement with discretion and freedom. Life itself becomes more substantial when the medium carries weight, when culture can be held in the hand, when experience is anchored rather than drifting.
The LP spins, the CD clicks, the wired headphones hum, the landline rings, the paper book turns, the linear show begins — each one a leap forward, a reimagining of what technology can do for human experience. Progress is once measured in speed, in wireless reach, in infinite choice, is now measured in form, substance, and control.
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