I think marketing as we knew it has died. Drowned in a sea of technology that has fundamentally changed the way people interact with media and the advertising it contains.
I came of age in the prime of prime time. TV was king and all young marketers aspired to make 30 second commercials and blast the middle class into submission with zillions of GRP's. With rare exceptions, that is no longer a viable plan. The audience is just not there and when they are...they just don't care.
When the internet arrived most marketers took their tv strategy and reapplied it to banner ads. Lured with the potential of micro targeting, we poured our money into ads that framed the content that fueled the audience. Just like tv right? Wrong. The consumer had tasted freedom and they wanted no part of these ads. They learned to circumnavigate them, to not even "see" them...much less click on them. Seth Godin had it right years ago, it's a permission based medium and the consumer has the power.
So welcome to the new beginning. The birth of marketing on the Internet. The flood waters have receded and Noah is unpacking the ark. Shallow, tag line marketing didn't make the boat. What has survived is content. Real content. Stuff people want to read, watch and talk about. "Content is king" was a phrase fashioned to define how to draw traffic to a website in the late 90's. Well guess what? The phrase also applies to our marketing.
For decades we have lived as a parasite on media. The speed bump between programming. Those days are done. Marketing must become the programming. The paradigm is that we are now the broadcasters. Entertain, educate, engage or prepare for extinction.
It's with this conviction that I commissioned this campaign for a safety brand. Yes a boring safety brand. Please review here http://bulwark.com/451/ I'm proud of this work for a lot of reasons, but this morning, I am most proud of it because it is a step into the new world. The new frontier few are exploring.
Marketing is dead, long live marketing.
PS: Thanks to my friends at Fitzgerald + Company in Atlanta for helping make this strategy a reality (I'm talking to you Llneveldt)
