Marketing as we know it does not work anymore. Just in case you did not hear me: MARKETING AS WE KNOW IT DOES N OT WORK ANY MORE. If you did not hear me: MARKETING AS WE KNOW IT DOES NOT WORK ANYMORE
My point? Today we are bombarded with marketing messages. So many that we have to shut them out to cope. So most of what is spent on marketing is wasted.
The issue is now how do we get people's attention.
Here is a snip ffrom a brilliant article on this topic by Michael Goldhaber
Money and Attention
So let's now take up the topic of this of transition, which has been underway for some time and will loom still larger in the next few years. I have described the attention economy itself without saying anything about the role of money in it, which was easy because in a pure attention economy money has no essential function, no real role to play. In the period of transition from old economy to new, however, the connection between money and attention is significant and needs examining. If you have a lot of attention, you are a star of one sort or another, and we all know that these days stars generally have little trouble obtaining money in large amounts. Just think of the amounts that go to movie stars, sports stars, or even leading politicians or generals who retire to the lecture circuit or propose to oversee the ghostwriting of their memoirs. And if they have some pet project, such as a movie they want to make or a cause they want supported they can often influence their publics or bankers to cough up many millions more.
Within the framework I have suggested, there is little mystery as to why this should be. If fans are willing to do anything up to some limit for stars, such as wait in long lines to see them perform, avidly make sure to be there when they come to town, applaud them and sing their praises however they can, often paying more attention to stars than to members of their own families and so on, then it should come as no surprise that fans are also willing to pay out money at the stars' behest. It is just one more way to follow a star's wishes.
In other words, money now flows along with attention, or, to put this in more general terms, when there is a transition between economies, the old kind of wealth easily flows to the holders of the new. Thus, when the market-based, proto-industrial economy first began to replace the feudal system of Western Europe, in which the prime form of wealth was aristocratic lineage and inheritance of land, both the noble titles and the lands that went with them soon ended up disproportionately in the hands of those who were good at obtaining what was then the new kind of wealth, namely money.
With considerable ease, the rising merchant and industrialist class could buy old titles, induce governments to grant them brand new ones, or marry into the old impoverished gentry. The parallel today, again, is that possessors of today's rising kind of wealth, which is attention, and whom we label stars of every sort, have an easy time getting money.
But now let me point out that the other way round doesn't work nearly as easily. Contrary to what you are sometimes urged to believe, money cannot reliably buy attention. Suppose it did work that way. Then you could have been paid to sit here and listen closely even if I were to read you something as boring as the phone book or an unabridged dictionary. Presumably it wouldn't even matter if I kept repeating the same few syllables over and over. If money could reliably buy attention, all I would have to do is pay you the required amount and you would keep listening carefully through all that, not falling asleep en masse, nor allowing your minds to wander. In truth, even if you had been paid a huge sum, this would be most difficult, and if you did it, it would be a testament more to your own deep sense of principle than to a general condition in which another roomful of similar people could be expected to do equally well.
Someone who wants your attention just can't rely on paying you money to get it, but has to do more, has to be interesting, that is must offer you illusory attention, in just about the same amounts as they would if you had instead been paying money to listen to them -- which by the way is closer to the case here. Money flows to attention, and much less well does attention flow to money.
2 key points for me. You have to get people's attention and you can't buy it. My answer - you have to create a legitimate relationship to be heard. The old transactional relationships are not good enough. In fact they push me away because at their heart they work against me.
We are quickly losing all trust in the advertised benefits of products. The drug industry is in total crisis. For instance, last week Merck ran a full page ad saying in essence - sorry about Vioxx but be assured that our other drugs are safe. Pfizer also run a full page ad saying that while Celebrex is the same type of drug it is different and is safe. Only months ago we learned that HRT is a high risk treatment and Bayer had to withdraw their leading cholesterol reducing drug Baycol which was killing patients. It is not only drugs. Coke withdrew Dasani from the UK and delayed the EU launch when it came out that it was not safe. If you watch Supersize me - you will be sure that the fast food industry has bene poisoningus as did the tobacco industry.
In the past only tree huggers complained. But now with the internet full transparency is available. More from Goldhaber:
The Web and other media aid this development by allowing you to look behind the scenes as easily as at them. Gossip, interviews, biographies of individuals involved in specific efforts, photos, videos of rehearsals, documentaries of pre-performance steps, all are visible or can be visible on the Web, taking equal status with the final performances themselves. Documentaries about the production of movies are common by now; a movie about a movie is just as accessible as the first movie.
This transparency will even more be the case in the very near future, and, as a result, organizations will diminish in importance at rapid pace, relative to the importance of the individuals who are temporarily in them. Even as stable and long-lasting an institution as Harvard will be less its familiar buildings and more the people in the buildings, and the networks of attention among them. And whether these people are physically at Harvard or somewhere else will matter less and less, until the institution loses all coherence, all distinctness from other universities or from any one of hundreds of other organizations which have audiences in common.
In a full-fledged attention economy the goal is simply to get either enough attention or as much as possible. Recall now what I pointed out earlier: if you have a person's full attention, you can get them to perform physical acts, ranging from moving their eyes to follow you, to raising their hands, to applauding, to bringing you a glass of water, to handing you a sandwich, or, as is not uncommon in the case of rock groupies or sports fans, having sex with you (to cite a notorious example). Just as a parent paying attention to a child fills its material wants and desires, so a fan, that is anyone paying attention can feel an obligation or a desire to do the same for whomever they are paying attention to.
Marketing as we know it is dead
