Nov 18 2013
Re: The New Era Of Marketing
This week I will be responding to a post from a classmate in my marketing 296 class. Lydia Choi recently highlighted thetransformation of marketing tactics throughout the past century. Firms have moved from a logical marketing strategy – simply stating the specifications of the product, to appealing to emotions to empathize with consumers, to creating an interactive environment for the consumer from the marketing campaigns to the shopping environment.
I would like to commend Lydia on her insightful observations. While reading her blog, I began to ask myself what drove entire groups of marketing firms to change their tactics on such large scales, and came to realize that her statement required a slight adjustment. In fact, quite a few brands today still use a logical marketing strategy – for example, ThinkPad still operates under the notion of robust, dependable design, as do many other PC brands who brand customization. So, some select niches with loyal customers can continue to see success under a logical strategy.
However, in today’s competitive markets, with many well-established firms in a variety of industries from retail to technology to beauty products, emerging firms must adopt an interactive marketing strategy to differentiate their brand. This could include cliffhanger advertisements which prompt the viewer to visit their website to find out what happened next (GoDaddy, SuperBowl commercial), to the more popular social media campaigns on Facebook and Instagram. For example, Vancouver-based tattoo and piercing studio Adrenaline frequently holds contests on their Facebook page, offering a free simple piercing to the first customer who visits the store and completes a given challenge.