The £12 billion economy

Koopa is not the first to be top of the pops online. Its just that the rules for counting what's in and what's not have changed. In fact online markets have been encroaching on the high street fast and for a long time.

What is important is that the power of the online community is such that the dusty institutions like Entertainment Retailers' Association have had to acknowledge the reality of online interactions and sales.

I am still wincing over the UK retailers sluggish response to online markets in the last ten weeks of last year. Not being able to cope because of logistics problems is plain daft.

If one does a quick analysis of each of the sectors in the UK economy, it is possible to get an insight into how much is mediated by the Internet.

I have been doing just that

The current value of the Internet Mediated economy is now approaching £12 billion.

Or, to put it another way more than one £ in 10 of the UK economy is mediated by the Internet. Put another way, if the .net went down for a full year the UK economy would shrink 10% with a knock on effect on all other parts of the economy.

What this means for PR is this. If practitioners are not involved in this part of the economy, they are not part of a big slice of the action and because it is the fastest growing economic mediator (faster even than financial and construction put together - both of which are dependant on the Internet).

This is why the CIPR needs to be taking it much more seriously.