Traditional advertising in a world of online communities
Political campaign organizers have known for many years that the more targeted the message, the more likely it would be to generate a voter to take a desired action. In 2008, the technologies were finally customized and utilized to make hyper-targeting possible. Because of the brilliance of the Obama campaign, politics is out in front of the traditional marketing world.
The result is a growing recognition and understanding that, through the internet, a transformational shift in the marketers capacity to reach smaller and smaller audiences is occurring. Whether the product being marketed is a consumable good or an idea, our ability to reach down to the micro level for targeting is changing what is said about it into a more and more personalized approach. Increasingly, I believe that those who understand that and can craft those messages effectively will drive the larger communications program of organizations, corporations and campaigns.
On TV and radio, while we may have a target audience, our desire to avoid alienating anyone else that might be listening, leads to a lowest common denominator in the message. With a greater capacity to reach a micro audience, the value is already shifting from the quantity of the contact to the quality of the contact.
This reality requires that everything we know about advertising changes. Instead of marketing the end – which is the product – we need to market the community itself that will then support the product. Continue Reading »
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