Goodbye Advertising, Hello Social Media!

Or not. Lately, I’ve been getting my self embroiled in conversations with people that prat on and on about how advertising in the new marketing age is dead. The future of marketing is CGM and Social Media. As many already know, I’m a big fan of Social media, web2.0 and new emergent technologies but as for advertising being dead – well I just poo-poo that notion..

A couple of schools of thought that some of my marketing colleagues and I tend to disagree about:

Q: What is advertising.

For them it’s a 1-1 communication; It’s me as a marketer communicating to you as the customer. You don’t communicate back, you just (hopefully) pay attention and then (hopefully again) respond as a new customer.

For me, advertising is about putting your brand/marketing message in front of an audience. It’s about getting their attention; and getting them to respond. Having said that, why would social media ‘not’ fall into the category of advertising? Traditional advertising it’s not but whether you call it community word of mouth, social media, or interactive dialogue – your objective is still the same. You’re getting your message out to your audience in hopes that they’ll “get it”. And I’m not necessarily a believer that advertising in social forums (however good or bad the response is) is a bad thing.

If we’re talking about traditional advertising then it’s true; It’s “in flight”. In a world where consumer control is heading straight for the helm of marketing efforts (be it TIVO, Youtube, or circumventing online click ads), people aren’t going to listen to the things they don’t want to hear. The trick is to make it relevant, make it meaningful. Traditional media will only die if marketers refuse to give up control. What marketers need to do is find a way get traditional advertisements in on the consumer-control action. Think Tide detergent's new 'Crescent Heights' ads that interweave traditional advertisements with online and social media (Thanks James). Be creative. Stop talking "at" them and start talking "with" them (as with the ever popular Secret deoderant 'What's your secret' ad campaigns).

If you can connect and engage with your target audience then bravo. But whatever the ad-road you travel: Good marketing plans are like strong investment portfolios. What does that mean? Diversify, diversify, diversify.

Advertising in the traditional sense, is here to stay. We as marketers need to get off our butts and start looking at how we can utilize traditional advertising in a "non-traditional" way.