Originally Published: June 2004
At the dawn of the television era, building a massive commercial business was relatively easy as long as you had a decent product and money for advertising. With just a few radio and television stations to choose from, customers could be targeted easily. Usually, companies would broadcast a general commercial message directed at the largest possible group of consumers. With a decent product, customers would beat a path to your door. This technique worked more often than not, mostly because consumers had limited product choices and extremely limited information to make buying decisions. Companies such as Procter & Gamble took advantage and saw their sales grow rapidly. They reinvested in advertising, which continued to grow sales, and the cycle continued. With consumers’ lack of knowledge, producers held all of the power. But over the last twenty years, the advertising game has changed dramatically. Consumers now hold the cards and technology is a main reason why.
In the 1950’s, advertisers could be very effective because potential customers had very little contact with commercial messages throughout their day. On any given day, an individual may only have seen a few commercial messages, so those messages had a good chance of sticking in consumers’ minds. People remembered and generally trusted what they saw or heard. In turn, this consumer trust and lack of other product or service choices, made advertising a very successful method of driving sales. Today, consumers are bombarded by hundreds of commercial messages everyday. Just some of the commercial outlets include: network television, hundreds of cable channels, video on demand, the Internet, email, magazines, billboards, signs on busses, posters at bus stops, product placements in television shows (You didn’t think it was an accident that Joey just happened to drink a can of Mountain Dew on an episode of friends did you?), movies (James Bond’s BMW, for example), radio broadcasts, sporting events, cleverly disguised word-of-mouth marketers in local bars, clubs and hangouts (that good looking man or woman with the latest cell phone conspicuously held in his or her hand might not be your regular club goer) and even some news outlets are blurring the lines between news and commercial messages disguised as news (ever watch “The Daily Buzz” or “Fox and Friends”?). With so many commercial messages, consumers just aren’t paying attention anymore. And with this high volume of messages from companies constantly claiming “ours is better”, along with proliferation of fraud committed by fake companies or false promises, consumers no longer trust what they see or hear. They don’t believe what companies are saying, and they don’t believe there are honest companies that make good products and services. As such, consumers tune out commercial messages completely and the communication falls on deaf ears.
In the past, if a consumer was actively seeking information on a product or service, he was limited to what he saw on a few television stations, the newspaper or a few magazines. Beyond that, he could go to a business or store and speak with a sales person or possibly ask his neighbor for advice. That was the extent of the information he could access. But today, a consumer has access to thousands of information sources via traditional media, such as television, radio and magazines, and new media like the Internet, which has completely opened up the flow of information from the producer to the consumer. Consumers can now find every intricate product detail, users’ past experiences and rankings of products or services or just about any other piece of information. Along with information, the sheer number of products and services available to consumers is overwhelming. This plethora of information and alternative product and service choices is good for consumers but puts producers, retailers and business-to-business marketers in a difficult position. The power has now shifted and is firmly in the hands of the consumer.
Another relatively new technology has further eroded traditional advertising effectiveness…the digital video recorder. For those of you unfamiliar with digital video recorders (the most common of which is TiVo), they are similar to a VCR, but they digitally record rather than record on tape or other medium. So, it will record any program you wish, even while you are watching a different show. You can even pause and slow motion live programs. They are a tremendous convenience for users, but they can be a problem for marketers as viewers can easily skip over commercial messages. Now, not only do advertisers face the problem of ineffective media and consumer buying power, but they are now spending money on messages fewer and fewer people will see.
The answer to these challenges lies in a significant shift in thinking and the effective utilization of new technology. No longer does traditional advertising automatically guarantee success. Instead, in a buyer’s market, manufacturers, distributors, retailers and business-to-business marketers first need to deliver outstanding products and services that significantly rise above the rest (not just good products and services, but outstanding ones). Companies must then precisely target their communications by properly selecting the correct mix of traditional and non-traditional media. Marketers will need to combine technology-based marketing outlets, such as email, websites, interactive communications and mobile marketing (like text messaging), with traditional print, radio, television, outdoor advertising and events/sponsorships. The proper mix of new and old advertising routes will bring success. New technology forces change in marketing behavior, and it’s time to adjust our advertising and customer communications away from traditional media toward these new technologies that deliver personalized, one-to-one communication, allowing you to build long-term relationships with your customers. Are you embracing new technology in your marketing efforts? If not, your competition already has an advantage.
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