Individualized Strategies
As should be expected, the preferred
media change more quickly in advertising
than they do in any other industry sector.
Dave Wilson questioned whether “the
days of pushing the same message out to
everybody” are numbered and asked if a
fully individualized strategy would prevail.
Phil Gayter, director of creative services with Nicholson Kovac, certainly sees an end to “the days of traditional marketing where you pumped out the client’s message and the consumer either believed it or not.” Today, he believes, consumers have much more ability to evaluate the accuracy of an advertiser’s claim and are often willing to do so.
To everyone’s amusement, Gayter told the tale of how a woman who had asked him out—modern times indeed—“Googled” his name before daring to do so. “That’s the dynamic we have,” said Gayter. “‘I am going to Google you and see if you’re for real.’”
“I think the consumer has been
trained to expect things personalized,”
said Tom Tholen, chief strategy officer
of Callahan Creek. “I believe that is
the next frontier for advertising.” As
Tholen observed, clients are continually
asking how they can segment their
database so they can have something
like a one-to-one conversation with
their customers.
“I think there is a fine line between personalization and creepy,” said John January, creative director of Sullivan, Higdon & Sink, in what was arguably the quote of the day. He contended that consumers have to be in control of the degree of personalization or “they will really shut us down.”
“It’s beyond creepy,” said Charlie
Tetrick, president and CEO of Walz
Tetrick Advertising, who protested the
flood of messages to his email and likely
soon to his cell phone. “People are going
to hate it.”
“You’re right,” agreed Julie Robinson, chief operating officer at Kuhn & Wittenborn. “It is a privacy issue as well as a marketing issue.” She expects to see legislators begin to weigh in on the limits of monitoring that Internet providers can exercise.
Tholen, however, argued for the benefits of personalization. He cited the usefulness of the personal recommendations that Amazon andiTunes make.
“When the insight is coming from the consumer,” said Tholen, “you are more likely to make that person feel as though they have been honored by what you’re presenting.”
Traditional Media
Phil Bressler, a principal with Muller Bressler Brown, thought it much too early to write off mass media. “There is still a lot of times a real need for that broad exposure,” he noted. Bressler cautioned against jumping fully onto the personalization bandwagon. The death of television, he argued, has been greatly exaggerated.
It would be wrong, elaborated Craig Braasch, chief operating officer of VML, to think of mass marketers as indiscriminate. “You think about 50’s television. They weren’t running the same spots during soaps in the day as they were during prime time, on those three channels, at night.” Targeting markets is nothing new.
Ethan Whitehill, CEO of Two West,
agreed on the need for mass media,
although adding, “The definition of
mass is changing and mass is becoming
much smaller.” The real challenge, as
he sees it, is to connect and integrate
the mass and the personal.
Patty Scheier with Fasone & Partners
expressed uncertainty about the future of
television. The viewership is obviously still
there, but the use of digital video recorders
(DVR) continues to grow and, with it, a corresponding
decline in ad effectiveness. The
Internet meanwhile has captured the attention
of many who once relied on TV news.
“I am not sure what they need to survive,” said Scheier of the networks, “because it’s a whole new genre.”
One solution, John January suggested, is to produce “absolutely killer creative” that causes DVR users to stop, rewind, and watch. Better still, “It is measurable.”