What to do? When media exposure is apparently driven and controlled by the tribal actions of consumers themselves, is any pretence at control and measurement of advertising now pointless?
Above all, advertising has been about brand awareness. In the post-Internet world, it isn’t any more: it’s about consumer intimacy.
This doesn’t of course mean that we don’t need people to continue to be aware of our brands. But we do need to move beyond counting impressions – eyeballs if you like – to creating and managing intimacy, by which we mean here a disposition to positively engage with our brand by consumers.
Three things about the way we approach advertising change fundamentally as a result of all this.
First of all, our focus needs to be dragged from the past – how well did the campaign do in terms of impressions? – to the future – how likely is this or that important consumer group to re-engage with our brand, based on what we’ve learned about them.
We can combine two critical marketing communications disciplines here – media planning and relationship management – to create a new and useful hybrid discipline called “Relationship Planning”.
Indeed, it’s conceivable that the valuation of a big brand will shortly be calculated – with refreshingly cold precision – by aggregating global “consumer futures” of intent to engage, either by purchasing a product or just allowing the brand into their closely (digitally) guarded field of attention.
Secondly, we need to radically extend our view of media-based advertising as being primarily an outbound, “brand>consumer” activity, to include a new and powerful inbound dimension.
Why? Because in our 21st century pinball machine model of media, the most critical messages are no longer those the brand attempts to disseminate to its audiences, but a) those exchanged about the brand and/or its desired area of influence between tribal consumers, and b) those messages that come back to the brand from the consumer.
The most powerful – and yet to be fully felt – impact of networked digital media on brand marketing is the opportunity – the imperative – to observe the marketplace in which our brands must exist, receive and make sense of the inbound intelligence we need, and rapidly respond with fresh, relevant propositions.
Thirdly, and most controversially for the media status quo, we move from buying our media in the bowling alley – to “earning our media” in the pinball machine.
Bought media, in this age of priceless, endangered consumer attention and tribal impact, has to fight at least twice as hard for its impact.
First to acquire the inventory where its messages will live and then to cut through the other messaging noise in the same channel, to make some sort of impression.
Earned media – where the brand/ball magically hits a sweet spot among a series of tribal bumpers and a huge wave of media activity – buzz if you must – is created and driven across networks, has dual benefits, in these tough times.
Costing in general a fraction of bought, and coming with its relevance and cut-through installed as standard.
Why? Because it’s largely “by consumer for consumers”.
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