This week’s New York Times Sunday Magazine delved into the marketing and advertising world in today’s media saturated culture. They assembled an elite group of some of the top New York marketing people and had an open discussion about marketing centered around the theme of “screens.” The idea being that today’s consumer spends much of his or daily life interacting with information presented on screens, be it on a computer, a cellphone, tv, etc. and that this has changed the nature of advertising from a narrative created by the brand itself to one controlled by the consumer. What everyone on the group agrees on is that the static nature of television content and the tradition format for advertising ther is a dying trend. The rate at which the average consumer can find the exact information he or she seeks on the internet is far more rapid, and thus far more appealing.

The consumer’s interaction with the brand has thus become paramount. As opposed to testing advertising campaigns in focus groups where opinions can be easily skewed, Youtube has created a democratic sounding board for new campaigns. Advertisers can get instant feedback, and as in the case of the Tiger Woods EA Sports glitch, can incorporate such feedback into their marketing efforts:

EA Sports, the video-game company, is a good example. On YouTube, someone posted a clip of himself playing the company’s Tiger Woods golf game. He put it up as a joke, laughing at EA Sports, because he had discovered a glitch in the programming that allowed Tiger to walk right out onto a pond next to the golf course and shoot his ball from there. So the company saw the video, and in response, it uploaded this ad to YouTube that said: “It’s not a glitch. He’s just that good.” The ad showed the real Tiger, in live action, actually walk on water and shoot a ball. That’s a great example of responding to how consumers interact with your brand.

The challenge then is to interact with the consumers with the same immediacy that they interact with everthing else in the digital space, or at the very least providing the tools to facilitate such interaction. Companies are shifting money away from tv spots and focusing more and more on innovative ways of reaching consumers, everything from mobile apps and flash games to creating niche market products marketed directly to very specific groups.

This article raises a few questions that I’ll be thinking about in the coming weeks. How can marketers continually come up with innovative new ways of reaching consumers? At what point does the consumer become too wary of all the innovations, and realize that content is just a means to promote commerce? There is definitely an ideal balance, as by now almost everyone has come to expect some ammount of advertising in combination with content, but how much is too much?

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As I’ve talked about before, the success of a viral marketing campaign ultimately comes from the stickiness of the content, and the desire in the ‘host’ to willingly pass it on. Office max had an incredibly successful campaign last year with it’s “elf yourself” videos. The company employed a humor company, JibJab, to create dancing elf videos that anyone could upload their own pictures to, creating a video of dancing videos with their friends, family, or co-worker’s heads. At it’s peak, the website traffic rivaled that of Facebook, and in total was viewed by more than 100 million unique visitors. The company plans to recreate the magic this year, and to expand the features and available videos. Read more here.

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Seth Godin, author of Tribes, just wrote this very insightful article pertaining to the publishing industry. He makes a good case for the dynamic nature of ecommmerce, and how the market doesn’t owe anybody anything. Reaping the rewards comes from adapting to the climate, and not the other way around. Read the article.

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Social networks can be leveraged in a way that was once dubbed ‘secret’ or “undercover’ marketing.  A few years back 60 minutes took a look at few guerilla marketing operations that put undercover marketers in situations where they appeared to be normal people. They were placed on street corners or in Starbucks’, and their task was simple; use a product and invite other people to try it too.  The ‘secret’ aspect was to combat the challenge that marketers face on a daily basis; people are so bombarded by marketing and advertisement that they are desensitized – ‘secret marketing’ allows marketers to reach consumers without them knowing they’re having a product pitched to them.  

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