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A Look Back at 2007—and a Look Ahead to 2008
December 29, 2007

In December, 2007, Business Week recapped the biggest trends in marketing in 2007—typical fin d’annee stuff—and the biggest trend they noted was that the notion of “branding” has been turned on its head. For example, Scott Cook, founder of Intuit—maker of Quicken and QuickBooks financial software—remarked that, “A brand is what a friend tells a friend it is. Not what a company tells them.” In the brave new world of Web 2.0, the blogosphere, and viral video, consumers have stopped being passive, soaking up advertising and marketing slogans and repeating them as shopping mantras. Rather, the new Web is about contribution and collaboration, and users themselves decide what is a brand worth touting. At the same time, the most successful marketing campaigns have been those that exist outside the purview of traditional marketing.

Some examples:

Blender company Blendtec is succeeding with its “Will It Blend?” viral videos of unusual objects (light bulbs, iPods, iPhones) put into a blender. Half David Letterman, half Ginsu knife infomercial (“cuts a can!”), these videos have been viewed an estimated 70 million times.

A British sports journalist created the Web-based My Football Club, which attracted more than 50,000 football (that is, soccer) fans to become owners and managers of the Ebbsfleet United football team. Created and marketed on a shoestring, the team has attracted major sponsors such as EA Sports and Eurostar.

Other media watchers have also come up with their end-of-year top spots lists, and nestled among top TV shows and TV ad spots are the top 10 viral videos—and Nielsen has even ranked the top ringtones (number one is T-Pain’s “Buy U A Drink” which I’m sure I have inadvertently heard at the post office or grocery store).

But the money quote from the Business Week article is:

Technology has, intentionally or not, given us open channels to millions of people, and with them instant feedback on the products we make and the messages we deliver. Choose to ignore that and we will certainly fail. Choose to listen and we can deliver better products and services in a genuine way. That seems like a good idea.

That is, new advertising and marketing platforms—enabled by technology, of course—facilitate user feedback and, if the user is sufficiently engaged, user propagation. This is what we mean by “viral” marketing. Sure, this is nothing new. Water cooler conversations for decades have occasionally brought up eye-catching ads from the previous evening’s TV fare, and the ad slogan—repeated ad nauseam throughout popular culture—dates back to the 1940s, if not earlier. But the new age of viral takes this into the 21st century. The user-generated echo chamber creates brands in a way that we have never seen before. In some ways, this implies a more sophisticated and discriminating  user base—proponents have felt that this will lead to the creation of better products and services. But in other ways, it’s really about appealing to more or less primal interests (stuff put in a blender, or last year’s “explosive” Mentos-thrown-in-a-Coke-bottle viral videos). Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

Ultimately, what this means for the advertising and marketing industry is that success is increasingly to be found in unconventional approaches to branding and marketing. It’s not even a case of thinking “outside the box.” The idea is to deny that the box even exists at all.

While all of this poses challenges to advertising and marketing firms, we’re not worried. After all, marketing has always been about creativity. This is why we call them “creatives.”

Going into 2008, we see advertisers and marketers (and the culture in general) edgy about what the economy has in store. And yet, we should remember that we don’t have to be unwilling pawns of greater economic forces; smart companies and individuals can always weather what the economy throws at them, and without resorting to Spongebob-like panic and screaming. As ever, the most successful companies will be small, nimble, and smart ones who, by dint of quick thinking, can surpass their larger, lethargic brethren who feel the solution to any economic ill involves layoffs and draconian internal cost-cutting.

Posted by Richard Romano on December 29, 2007 | Comments (0)