Old Marketing Is Losing Its Effectiveness Fast. Very Fast.
When I grew up, Old Marketing was in its infancy. Old Marketing as in “Interruption Marketing”. There were 2 TV channels, and every hour or so, only in between two different programs, there was a 5 minute commercial block. My parents, their time ahead, always turned off the volume during these breaks.
Over the years, the amount of TV channels doubled, quadrupled, centupled and people needed to get interrupted more often and more aggressive to get the desired effect of creating product awareness. Nowadays a 1,5 hour movie can take twice this time if you include all the commercial breaks.
Interruption marketing was as well taking place when driving around. In the beginning an occasional bill board was interrupting your views of the surroundings. However, if you now enter a city, you can’t see anything anymore behind the wall of MediaMarkt, Leroy Merlin, Ford and Nissan bill boards.
But times are changing. In this Age of Interruption, consumers become more and more creative in finding ways to deal with it. Commercial breaks are great for a sanitary stop, or to get something to drink. TiVO and Digital TV allow us to watch movies undisturbed. And there are not a lot of people who haven’t installed a pop-up blocker yet.
Mainly due to the interactive internet (2.0) and social media, the way consumers make their purchase decisions is changing. They want to be seen as partners, not as a “target group” and they have the same objectives as you do: to give and receive value. In the next post I will explain more about that, but influencing by interruption only will become something of the past very fast.
Most companies however still focus their marketing efforts on interruption. And although using new technologies like pop-ups and banners, or ads in LinkedIn or Facebook, it’s still interruption.
The question is, when was the last time you bought a brand new Skoda (a brand you’ve never driven before) for €27.000 because you saw their bill board?
