Predicting the Next 5 Years in Retail

4. Passive vs. active. At a core level, people are passive about media, with TV being the prime example. The more work you make them do (e.g., click on a link, answer a survey, read a print advertisement), the less likely they are to do it. Break up your media by whether it's passive or active, Joel advised. Twitter and Facebook are very active media. Are you in an active media acting passively - e.g., letting a significant amount of time pass before responding to a customer's Facebook post - or in a passive media acting actively? Retailers are going to have to take an active media approach in order to get consumers to react, Joel said.