The advertising process is always evolving, but recent changes in technology, the economy, and the way people socialize are opening exciting new opportunities for smart businesses of every type and size. Those who embrace the changes will discover advertising that reaches farther, speaks with greater relevance, and has the power to improve the quality of the product itself! What’s not to like?
For most of the last century advertising involved a monologue. Brands spoke to consumers through mass media with powerful results. During the decade of the sixties an advertiser could reach 80 percent of all the women in America by running a single spot simultaneously on the three television networks. Americans were well connected to mass media at the time, but poorly connected to each other.
By 1962 ninety percent of American homes had both a television and a radio, but it would be almost ten more years before the same percentage of homes also had a telephone! Furthermore, local TV and radio signals arrived freely but a telephone call to a friend in another town incurred long distance charges that increased with distance. These circumstances encouraged mass media consumption but penalized interpersonal communications.
Cha... cha... changes
But changes over the last twenty five years have altered the advertising landscape. Technology spawned new media whose specialized programming better matched specific interests, but also splintered audiences into ever-smaller niches. Three television channels became hundreds, radio became AM, FM, Satellite, Internet, and Digital. Half a dozen national magazines in 1900 grew to more than 18,000 today and billions of web pages sprang from the ether. This trend increased media consumption overall but shrank individual audiences. Advertising was still the primary source of information about a brand, but it had difficulty reaching the masses as it once could.
As media were fragmenting, another equally important but less visible trend was altering the advertising environment: New media technologies were enabling consumers to connect with each other more easily and at a lower cost than ever before.
Between 1984 and 2006 cell phone subscribers in the United States exploded from 340,000 to more than 233 million. Each month the average American spends 13-22 hours wirelessly talking with friends, relatives and business associates. Americans sent a trillion text messages last year and that figure is increasing at 154% per month (thanks primarily to my teenage daughter).
Brand sponsored advertising is no longer the only source of information about a product or service. The myriad affordable or free ways people can now communicate with each other spells the end of the brand monologue. Today consumers also have a voice along with dozens of ways to express themselves and they are using this new ability to engage brands and each other. Smart companies must leverage this opportunity by engaging consumers in what I call a trialogue.
1. Monologue: From the brand to the consumer. Media fragmentation made it more difficult to reach a large audience but it has never been easier to reach the right audience. To get the most from traditional advertising, use mass media for general messages to larger audiences and targeted media to reach consumer niches that care most deeply about your product. Niche consumers are more likely to buy, benefit from, and become enthusiastic evangelists for a product or service. They are also more likely to be connected to people who share their interests, so the folks they tell are also more likely to care.
Whenever possible, give consumers an experience with your brand. In a world of bewildering options, experience helps consumers decide by providing a shortcut to understanding. Television spots for Apple’s iPhone demonstrated its unique touch screen interface and web navigation rather than trying to describe them.
2. Dialogue:
From the consumer to the brand. Listening is as important to your brand as
speaking. Your customers want to have a
say and to help shape the products they buy. They want to notify you about mistakes you’ve made and help you fix
them. Invite consumers to engage with your
brand in all of your advertising.
Select Comfort, makers of the Sleep Number Bed, created a blog where consumers
can engage company employees—from customer service reps to the CEO—with
questions and comments. It puts a
smiling face on the brand and helps consumers feel connected.
Use Google alerts, Technorati, and other technologies to monitor the
Internet for chatter about your brand and then re purpose that chatter for
promotional purposes.
Select Comfort gathers text, photos, and even videos on the topic of sleep found
on blogs, YouTube, and social networks and then posts them on a website called
“Sleep Conversations.” The information helps
Select Comfort understand its customer and improve its products. The page has promotional
value too. By attracting consumers
interested in improved sleep it introduces them to the Sleep Number brand while
answering their questions.
3. Trialogue: From consumers to each other. The connected consumer is more than advertising’s target; he or she is also a conduit through which it flows. Help them share your brand’s message with their social circle. Here are a few ideas:
- Package your message in formats that are easy to share. People can forward an email or an online video more easily than a billboard.
- Widgetize your online advertising. Clearspring and Gigya can modify traditional online ads into “widgets”, small windows that display text, photos, video, and more that consumers can post on their blogs or social network profiles
- Distribute coupons as text messages so consumers can use them and multiply their distribution by forwarding them to friends and relatives
- Invite consumers to participate in your advertising. Pringles asked its customers to write a new jingle and received thousands of entries it posted at www.jinglesforpringles.com. The winner included an animated video that was so good, Pringles used it in television advertising. Unfortunately, Pringles took the website down following the contest. Had they transformed it into an archive of consumer generated advertising instead, then the site would still be helping their brand.
In my next post I'll describe how these changes have altered the way people organize. Spread the fire. GS
[1] Source: CIA World Factbook 2007
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