The Advertising and Marketing tactics of yesterday are definitely not working today. If they are working for you, you are lucky, but I can wager that it won’t be the same a year or two from now. I told you that I would be giving examples of how big-boy brands were starting to use the new way of marketing and advertising. Here they are:
Big Budget Movie Studios – Sony for example, released the movie Vantage Point, a movie that plays on about 10 different characters’ point of view of an assassination attempt of the President. The T.V. spot they ran during prime-time was pretty good, interesting, and looked like a good movie with some unusual casting. But then at the end, they splashed across the screen a web site address and asked, “Can You Solve The Puzzle?”
With that, they suck their audience in, people go to the web address, and what do they find? A chance to win one of 8 Sony HD Camcorders and 8 Tivo DVR’s. The prize list goes on from there. The real clincher is that in order to win, you have to find the 2 coordinates that are hidden in the T.V. spot!
Their target market (probably 18 – 40 yr. olds) are tech and web savvy, and more than likely would like to win something. Imagine – how many times would one have to watch the T.V. spot to get the clues to the puzzle? Twice? 10 times? Boom – you have them captured!
The key here is to offer something your audience can do to interact with you in some fashion. If you do it right, and it is valuable, you have captured them.

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At least in the traditional, TV revolution sense. Advertising doesn’t have the same punch it used to, and we, the audience are not as eager to hear the message anymore. A new day in advertising and marketing is dawning and as a business owner, you best be ready. The old system doesn’t work, and the act of pouring money down the drain with print or TV advertising doesn’t bode well with your bottom line. Why?
Saturation and the Internet.

Let’s look at saturation: We are bombarded with thousands of messages everyday, companies begging and pleading for our attention. Pretty soon, even the parking lot at the grocery store won’t be safe!

From The Denver Post: “Imagine stepping out of your car in a grocery store parking lot. You look down and see that Pepsi has sponsored your parking spot. As you start walking, you see the same Pepsi ad on several parking stripes along the way. By the time you get inside the store, you’re really thirsty for a Pepsi. Either that or you’ve subliminally associated this delightfully fizzy beverage with cigarette butts, chewed wads of gum and motor-oil spills on the asphalt.”

Now, the internet. Would you waste your money on an advertising campaign you couldn’t track? Most likely not, especially if it is print or TV advertising. Now, take the internet – you can track your results in real time, you can get in front of an audience that is enormous, and if you optimize your web site right – your visibility is massive, because you are at the top of Google searches.

I say it is dead to get my point across, but traditional advertising and marketing is dying and on its way out. How do I know? How do you know I’m not full of bull? In Part 2, I’ll continue this series and give you examples of Big-Boy brands that acknowledge the shifting tide and how they are successfully adjusting.

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