Marketing – Sam Kimball – The New Normal

September 6, 2010

Media & Marketing 3.0

Over the past several years I have reflected frequently on where we are in the evolution of media and marketing — with one (1) goal in mind: what is the best way to market and promote a product or service RIGHT NOW. What is the How/What/Where/Who? To answer this question effectively it is helpful to review where we have been over the past 90 years. There have been three main phases:

Media & Marketing 1.0: 1920-1955 (Pre-Television Era)
Media & Marketing 2.0: 1955-2009 (Post-Television Era)
Media & Marketing 3.0: 2009 onward (Post-Digital Era)

In today’s world — the Post Digital Era — traditional mass media are in decline. Just look at the numbers for newspaper, television and radio advertising. New media (web, email, social and mobile) are of course on the rise. Look no further than what major brand marketers and consumers are doing:

In 1999 mainstream media (TV, Print, Radio) captured 98% of all Ford Motor Co’s advertising dollars in North America. Today it captures less than 70%. (source: Ad Age 2009)
Today internet advertising is greater than all broadcast radio ad spending (6% for Radio, 8% Internet) (source: NAB & IAB)
In 1985 there were 2 out-of-home audio choices (terrestrial radio, the Walkman). Today there are at least 5 choices (satellite radio, mp3 players, Internet radio, terrestrial radio, iPhones).

Bottom line: consumers are consuming media in many more ways than they were 10-15 years ago — thanks to the Internet. And within digital media there are dozens of choices for advertisers to make when they decide on how to push out their message. Below are just a few…12 to be exact:

web banners	email	paid search
behavioral targeting	widgets	social media
SEO (organic)	video	mobile media
iPhone apps	iPad apps	Internet radio

This list is not all encompassing either. There are more areas within digital. The point ultimately is not to get overwhelmed by the plethora of choices but to embrace them…and to find the sweet spot that is Marketing 3.0. The diagram up top is a rough illustration of this. Somewhere between Traditional Media, Internet and Mobile/Guerilla, is the right mix for any marketing campaign. It is a more complicated world now; so the degree to which marketers become skilled “media mixologists” is more important than ever.

Embrace the choices, embrace the mosaic of ways to get the message out. You will be surprised and delighted when your mix hits just the right note.

August 21, 2010

Did Media & Marketing Factor Into The Mortgage Mess?

Yes it did. I mention this because I have had interesting conversations with Wall Streeters lately about the mortgage mess and the financial meltdown. I have asserted that media and marketing played an important role in the disaster, as the promotional engine the financial sector used to entice people to take out loans they couldn’t repay. My point? Financial institutions aggressively marketed interest-only loans, HELOCs, negative amortizing loans and the like. I bring this up when my Wall Street friends complain that (i) politicians coerced the banks to extend the “dream of home ownership” to people of questionable means and (ii) consumers themselves were to blame for signing loans that they could never repay. At the end of the day we are BOTH right. Banks did aggressively market toxic loans, but it was to some degree a response to Washington pushing them to provide sub-prime mortgages to millions of under qualified Americans. And yes …consumers were all too happy to take the money being offered.

The tough thing is this: many parties WERE guilty in creating the bubble. We can agree on that. But Wall Street is back in the black and Main Street is still hurting. Bonuses on the Street soared in 2009. Some say they will be high again in 2010. And yet people living and working on Main Street are another year into the deepest recession in decades. Ask a small or medium size business owner you know — sales are soft and way off of where they were pre-recession. Ask someone who has been out of work for a year or more. I’m sure some of them would love to be able to borrow money from the Fed Funds window at 0% and then buy Treasuries and make an automatic, guaranteed profit. Like the big banks do.

We can’t blame Wall Street 100% for the mess. But there are those who find it hard to watch Wall Street making the big money again. And media and marketing? It factored in only as a tactic, a part of the larger dynamic that was played out from 1993-2008.

August 12, 2010

The New Paradigm

Over the past 5 years we have moved into a new age for media and marketing. The Internet has surpassed various traditional media in reach and influence. Media has fragmented. And the ‘work’ of marketing has gotten more complex, more comprehensive, more all inclusive. No longer is traditional marketing and planning sufficient. (Perhaps it is for some of the Fortune 500. But all others take note.) If you expect to market a product or service successfully, you must leverage the “mosaic” of tools that exist: web, email, behavioral targeting, social media, street marketing — and traditional media. This is clear to most good marketers today. But it is the COMBO of tactics — the mix, the ‘secret sauce’ — that makes a campaign in this environment successful.

So the posts shared on this blog will aim to take stock, take note and provide analysis on this new paradigm that I call Marketing 2.0.

New brands will emerge. Existing brands will roll up out new campaigns and products. Some will do so exclusively via digital means, some exclusively via traditional marketing. (Here’s a link to an interesting case study of digital-only marketing success.) But the most interesting work will take place in the intersection of old and new tactics. Where the secret sauce separates winners from losers. Where execution and strategy come together.