Let's get
one thing clear right away, I am not a marketing expert. I am a person who is
keenly interested in advertising and therefore also in marketing.
That said, I
can fearlessly begin with this potentially completely flawed post on what is
happening with marketing these days.
Let me begin
with why I am writing this post. It’s because I have come across way too many
pieces of online and offline communication about what this post's headline
talks about - Marketing is changing
drastically, the olde marketing ways are dead, traditional advertising is dead
and buried, mass media is going to fade away.... These messages, posts,
articles, videos, comments, tweets… have been crowding my mind without quite forming
any kind of tangible picture.
So I thought
I should try and get a clear picture in my head (to the extent that is
possible) by writing about it.
The basic
discussions seems to be about the fact that it is no longer relevant to broadcast your message, now your message
has to be discovered and shared.
The reason
being that now nearly the entire planet is on the Internet, and nearly everyone
is searching the Internet for information, reviews, tweets, posts, Facebook comments and
such, to gather information before choosing a particular product or service.
That is
absolutely correct. However, back when the Internet wasn’t there, whenever
possible we used to ask friends and if we knew one, even experts, before
choosing a product or a service. Now, this is happening on a much wider scale
and everyone is doing it. Therefore it is a very very important factor to
consider when marketing your brand. OK, got it loud and clear!
Now, social media is enabling groups of people to broadcast their message far and wide without spending any money on media - Twitter, Facebook, Google+ et al.
And it has brought down Governments.
Wow that’s
amazing. However, can a brand do something like that, very doubtful. No brand
can have a