Modern Marketing - Blog by Collaborate PR & Marketing

Have You Herd ?

My friends at Mutual Marketing have sent me Mark Earl's latest essay entitled, 'Advertising to the Herd'.

I think Earl's fresh thinking is excellent. This time he argues that humans are happiest when acting as herds, not individuals, and that modern marketing needs to recognise that.

This rings true to me and seems relevant to the type of consumer that I have been describing on this blog: one who is mobilised by technology and can quickly find like-minded people to form groups motivated by interest. Some of these groups have become quite powerful. Such at the file-swapping community who have forced the recording industry to rethink everything it does.

Is Wall Street Next ?

Google's proposal to go public through the web, because of Wall Street's 'excesses' from the dotcom bom years, is another example of consumers mobilising themselves through technology and sticking two fingers up at Big Business.

This time it's because the owners of Google know that if they are seen to be selling out for Wall St big bucks their brand will be trashed and their users/fans will desert them.

In the past Wall St bankers wouldn't have cared. They would have known there was no other way for a company to go public in the US. This time, they must be worried at the prospect of every float going direct to the consumer, and their big IPO fees being slashed.

First, the recording industry, then the broadcasting industry, now Wall St. Where will the new all powerful consumer turn next ?

Big Turn Off

Emily Bell's article in Monday's Guardian very clearly explains the serious problems facing the broadcasting industry.

Like a good deal of new technology the impact of PVRs was initially over-hyped. However, that could be about to change. Sky are now launching their own version and spending £20m on marketing it as standard kit for any home.

Should this happen it could mean the end of the schedule or as Emily Bell calls it the broadcasters' 'shop window'.

That's easier to understand when thinking about from the viewer's perspective : no channels.

Which would mean that the most successful communication platform of the last 50 years -- the TV ad -- will no longer exist.

This looks like another example of technology creating increasingly powerful consumers.

The fascinating area for modern marketing will be how the industry responds to this new all powerful consumer.

Cultural Glue

Saw this in an article about a programme called ESRC e-society being carried out by the London Business School.

"Our society is made up of conventions held together by cultural glue. An e-society could have different conventions and different glue. It is incumbent upon social scientists to analyse these elements and to suggest how digital connectivity would alter these social building blocks."

Such questions lie at the heart of modern marketing. I will try and find out more about the programme and report back.

Tomorrow's TV

Very interesting article in today's FT Creative Business describing the current value chain in the TV business and how it is changing.

The first link is talent, then production, then publishing and packaging (the channel), then distribution (the wire owners) and navigation (TV listings magazines).

The change that caught my eye was step four: distribution. The article notes that this has been a highly profitable because it was owned by just a few companies who could afford to buy and operate the infrastructure required to broadcast. "Because spectrum was so limited, the companies that controlled it had enormous power over the entire value chain, and took the largest part of the value created."

The question for modern times and modern marketing is who will own the future spectrum ? Possibly no one as the internet allows everyone to broadcast (albeit in different orders of magnitude). Possibly large corporations fiercely protecting themselves though aggressive launch of private networks. The article very sensibly stops short of any predictions but makes the point that multichannel TV took sixteen years to penetrate half of the market. Watch this space.

5th P ?

This blog seeks to understand how marketing techniques must change to remain relevant to the modern world.

However, these words from marketing guru, Peter Kottler, are a reminder that many of the basics remain the same.

'There is still relevance in the four Ps : Product, Promotion, Price and Place. For decades students in the US (Ed: and around the world including me!) have been taught that the marketing concept revolves round the four Ps. The problem is that modern followers of this philosophy seem to focus only on one P -- promotion.

Marketing has boxed itself in as a narrow discipline rather than being seen as a tool that can be effectively used as part of a wider business strategy. And marketeers are focusing in on honing specific skills, such as planning ad campaigns, but losing sight of the larger corporate picture.'

Should these basics be changed for a modern era ? Maybe only to show a greater importance of the new, more powerful consumer. Maybe a fifth P : people ?