Personalized Marketing for New Media - Interruptive Advertising for Mass Media

New media options have inundated consumers in recent years, and with so many entertainment and communication technologies available, consumers are harder to reach. In this new environment, old marketing strategies are rapidly becoming much less effective and in some cases, obsolete.

Consumers are no longer tolerating "interruptive" advertising to the extent they used to, and more personal marketing strategies are becoming a very effective method of appealing to online, networked consumers.

Photo credit: Bob Smith

With the internet, cellular phones, video game systems, on-demand cable, DVRs and other technologies, consumers are not as accessible via mass market advertising like televison or print. They are now "jacked-in" to infinite information on an unprecedented scale. They know what products are available, and they how to find them.

With this vast information and product access at their fingertips, today's consumers don't want to be barked at by persistent sales pitches. Instead they want to be spoken to like a friend, want to know what the product can do for them, they want to be engaged.

With the past decade's explosion in new communication technology, consumers now get information from a larger number of sources than ever before, and are able to access a wealth of information in seconds, advertisers need to recognize how this shift will effect their strategies.

In this new multi-channel, user-driven media world, traditional forms of marketing are rapidly becoming less effective.

Also known as "interruptive" marketing, traditional advertising is invasive, striking and often annoying, and relies on a captive audience forced to take in advertising messages passively on television, in print or on a variety of billboards. Under this advertising model, the advertiser defines the brand with a comprehensive ad campaign, consumers react predictably and the product sells.
But with a rise in new media forms, the mass media have seen huge declines in audience, and consumers are now much harder to reach using old marketing strategies.

With the internet, cell phones, instant messaging, video game systems, satellite television, on-demand television, DVDs, DVRs and other technologies, consumers are not as accessible via traditional media like newspapers or network television. They now use commercial breaks for quick cellular calls or switching between hundreds of cable channels, and visual billboards can go ignored as consumers peck away at a PDA.
Compound that with the information-sharing now available to networked consumers, where a few negative product experiences described on the net can kill an ad campaign and where positive word-of-mouth is more successful than any marketing strategy, and more control is now in the hands of consumers.

Therefore, marketers must first foster respect and deliver a quality product if they want consumers to view it positively.

This is the shift marketers need to make. Because potential customers now have near-infinite access to information, they often know what they want to purchase long before seeing an advertisement.

Therefore, instead of bombarding the public with endless advertising messages that disrupt their lives and leave the consumer feeling exploited, marketers now need to focus on more audience-friendly tactics that personalize the product and use strategies that create positive experiences to associate with it.

When advertising is part of the experience, it doesn't feel like an advertisement.

The VANS/Warped Tour is an example this, where skateboard shoe company VANS sponsors the travelling punk rock and skateboarding festival, Warped Tour. VANS is in a unique position, as their shoe and clothing line are designed for and used by skateboarders, who often listen to punk music. Users respect the company for making quality products that serve their particular lifestyle in a way they don't respect Nike, Reebok or Coke, who produce mainstream products appealing to everyone. And when VANS attaches its name to a music festival that is respectable, fans feel the company is supporting their lifestyle choice and providing them with an experience, not simply trying to create an ad campaign that panders to their demographic.

This is experience-based advertising. It weaves into the fabric of entertainment, offering a relevant product to a specific audience without leaving customers feeling exploited.

These strategies are beneficial to companies and consumers alike, as they don't need to be as comprehensive, and can be cheaper than traditional approaches, eliminating some overhead costs and lowering prices for consumers.

This is personalized marketing, it is more conversational than interruptive strategies, and more respectful of the audience.

It allows for opening a conversation between companies and customers and lets the customers be as much part of the dialogue as they like to be. Personalized, engagement marketing acknowledges customers unique value and the invaluable marketing and product development insight they can provide.

Although such marketing strategy is not applicable to every product, it reveals unbeaten paths that you may consider adopting in your future marketing efforts. Such new approaches can add new perspective to how advertising can be intelligently carried out while building trust and valuable feedback from customers-partners and doing away with old-fashioned, annoying and interruptive advertising strategies.

The fact that they still click on those banners is no good reason to keep spending most of your budget on them.