Karl Long has an interesting post over at his blog in which he questions whether the web is changing so fast that the “bold, innovative interactive marketers are now the traditional media.” and that the “flash based orgies for the senses” are not properly harnessing the new social marketing opportunities. I agree with Karl’s questioning here and think we’re definitely behind the curve.

Since the dawn of marketing, advertising and brands have gone where the communications and media touch-points emerged: in newspapers and magazines, on the radio, on TV, in cinema, online and of course most recently on mobile. What’s more the advertising appears to mirror and evolve with the media and its content. Take TV for example, as the breadth and depth of its programming expanded so too did the breadth and depth of the advertising and messaging. Advertisers knew they were competing with programming so in the early days of TV their messaging, like the programming, remained largely informative and direct. (In 1955 Sunday Palladium was the highest rated TV show)

First TV ad: Gibbs RS Toothpaste Ad (1955)

But as programming evolved, becoming cleverer, more entertaining, funnier, wackier so too did the advertising message. (e.g. Seinfeld)

Pot Noodle - The Slag of all Snacks

The relationship between the media context and the marketing content appears to be a naturally occurring one and has served the industry well over the last century.  

Which brings us back to Karl Long’s post about today’s interactive marketers. There’s no doubt that the Internet is changing much quicker than any other media has before it. But for the most part marketing has, like before, adapted reasonably well to the changing environment. In its early years the Internet was defined by email, cue the marketing spam frenzy; as the web became populated with first basic and information-led websites, banner advertising grew in much the same way, largely as informative sign-posting.

First ever banner from AT&T on Hotwired.com

As search became the default entry point for all web users, so the marketing budgets duly followed; as websites became more entertaining and interactive so too did the marketing

BK’s Subservient Chicken

But, as the web undergoes a seismic shift in favour of social and participatory technologies and the nature of our media consumption is fundamentally redefined (the user has the control, the ability to affect, utilise, share and edit the media through networks, communities, blogs and wikis) we’d expect to see a proportional shift in the marketing model as it mirrors its new environment, but in fact propensity to adapt appears to be slowing down.  Don’t get me wrong there’s a healthy number of marketers out there sitting ahead of the curve and channelling their spend into participatory, social and utility based marketing campaigns.

Nike Plus

But it’s simply no where near as fast as the collective consumer is adapting to and embracing their new environment. The Cluetrain Manifesto (written by Chris Locke, Doc Searls, and David Weinberger) pts it like this “to traditional corporations, networked conversations may appear confused, may sound confusing. But we [people] are organizing faster than they are. We have better tools, more new ideas, no rules to slow us down”. As an industry the feeling is that we’re slow to act, out of touch and that we simply ‘don’t get it’. It’s hard not to share some of that sentiment but it’s also very easy to see how we can change. By becoming more agile, more responsive and more involved in the new media-scape. By better understanding the fabric and nature of entire web and exploiting it the same way consumers do today.  But that’s a whole other post.  

Tags: advertising message, AT&T, banner advertising, Chris Locke, David Weinberger, Doc Searls, Karl Long, media consumption, media context, media touch-points, media-scape, social and participatory technologies, web users