On how media ubiquity may threaten branded marketing: “One is the creative challenge of getting [consumers’] attention … The other is the impact of social media.” —p.57
On the changes affecting consumers’ relationships with media: ”… the relationship is becoming very uneconomical … with a hundred times as many ways to interact with media, but not a hundred times as many people interacting with each one, individual audiences are smaller.” —p.57
A quote from Charles Kettering, inventor and former head of research for General Motors: ”The key to economic prosperity is the organization of dissatisfaction.” —p.58
On the dynamic between consumers, corporations and media (television) in 1964: “Corporations … controlled the content and the channels of distribution, which were both conveniently scarce… Scarcity made television, by definition, a communal experience for us.” —p.59
On the driving force behind the power shift from marketer to consumer (disintegration of audiences): “As each successive technology added more choices, those choices became more narrow and specific in their appeal.” —p.60
On how the remote control was viewed as a major threat: ” … the ‘clicker’ became a symbol of the greatest danger the branding world would ever and always face: the autonomous urges of the media consumer. When remote controls became common, ad agency types used them as threats to make clients agree to buy more entertaining and elaborate advertising ideas. ‘You don’t want to get zapped,’ creative types would solemnly intone …” —p.65
Continuing the analogy: ”When VCRs became common, it was the fast forward button that embodied this terrible fear. When personal video recorders like TiVo became common, the ease with which we consumers could avoid branded communications was the stuff of nightmares … since various industry sources now put the percentage of commercials “zapped” by TiVo and other PVR users at anywhere from 75 to 90 per cent.” —p.65
On being heard as a consumer: ”There is no ambiguity about what you like. You’re telling them with every click, often now in real time.” —p.70
How marketers will respond: ”Branded marketers … feel more and more compelled to follow and serve our preferences rather than carpet bomb us with ads. The on-line content that attracts their marketing money will be the content we care most about preserving.” —p.70
On putting it all out there: “Discourse between a brand and a single customer is often held in public, like a trial in open court, and the audience observes, learns, takes sides, and acts on how that discourse unfolds.” —p.71 (KG adds: Can’t resist adding Matthew Chidgey and Gasp as an example)
On getting the most from collective consumerism: “Nothing stands in the way of enlightened consumerism more stubbornly than the belief that we are victims of marketing. Or, that other people are.” —p.36
On getting what you/we want from brands: “Now it’s more often true that those same marketers are asking us mice to help them design the traps.” —p.36
Random, interesting descriptor: “… affluent, self-mythologizing Baby Boomers.” —p.37
On snark and nihilism brought about by pop culture: ”… we went from being dreamers and idealists about our lifestyles to being unwilling to confess that we even had one.” —p.37
On the pop culture agenda: “The ’90s gave us Titanic and The Lion King, yes, but they also gave us Pulp Fiction and Trainspotting and, for the cool kids who set the pop culture agenda, there was more social currency in the latter than the former, by far.” —p.38
Recounting a sentiment from media theorist Douglas Rushkoff: “Once a teen has been identified as part of the ‘target market’, he knows he’s done for. The object of the game is to confound the marketers, and keep one’s own, authentic culture from showing up at the shopping mall as a prepackaged, corporate product.” —p. 39
On the changing role of advertising: “Advertising had always been, and largely still was, the tip of the spear for brands, but the focus of its work had changed from creation to surveillance.” —p. 41
On the chain reaction of dishonest consumer feedback and its conversion to worthless marketing responses: ”… the marketer listening to my answer is concluding that what it takes to sell his product is information. It has to be great on paper, he will decide, and that’s all that matters. At best, this leads to uniformly dull, competent products but, again, no real choice; at worst, this false objectivity leads to manipulative theories and even product composites that make a brand look good on paper but aren’t really in our best interest.” —p. 47
On the hazards of this practice: ”The surveillance apparatus of marketers includes some tools that … discourage us from telling the truth … Asking the wrong question … makes good companies do stupid things, and bad companies do evil ones.” —p.47
On The Corporation’s likening of a corporation to a psychopath: “To a consumer, a corporation is better and more productively thought of as a giant, dull-witted organism, selfishly and narrowly preoccupied with its ecological destiny … The fact of evil practitioners does not impugn the legitimacy of an occupation.” —p.54
Being broad means being a source. Being deep means being a resource.
via Breadth vs. Depth | The Marketing Spot.
Well said.
