Marketing does not equal advertising

Brand Autopsy discusses a new book called The Chaos Scenario, which examines “what happens if the traditional marketing model collapses before a better alternative is established.” I haven’t read the book, so I’ll only talk here about the pull quotes from the review.

Two points to make:

1. Marketing is NOT JUST ADVERTISING. Marketing today is not solely reliant on straight up ads. This is a conceit of the old agency types who rely on it to make bank. If that is your view of marketing, you are in trouble already. Advertising is the most visible type of marketing, and it unfortunately also is what breeds dislike for the role of marketer today – a dislike that brands us all SPAM artists and media hacks (I sometimes feel like I should be wearing a “Scarlet ‘M’” based on a lot of the rants online these days). 

Too many books and analyses of the future of marketing strictly define marketing as advertising. This misses a huge new reality, and it’s simply unfortunate.

2. That misconception influences this quote:

 “The whole point of new media is small ball. Quit playing for the three-run homer and amass the singles and doubles. Because, says Starcon’s Tobaccoowala, ‘the key thing sis the economies of scale is going to disappear. That’s really what the issue is. Our business [advertising] has been built on the economies of scale. And instead we’re going to go into the economies of re-aggregation. Which is how do you get 10, 20, 30, 40 thousand people instead of talking in 250 million and making them into 12 and 30 million dollar segments. How do you re-aggregate one at a time the tens of thousands?’”

Marketing, especially in technology, is going through this type of change where one-size-fits-all messages no longer work. If they ever really did. Micro-segmentation, personalized stories, these are becoming the norm. However economies of scale are NOT going to disappear. Web-based business models, blogs, etc. are poster-childs of economies of scale. Spend 5 minutes posting a personalized message to a blog, and reach millions. Don’t worry about burning code to CD’s when you can just post it online for download and reach millions. The entire point of business on the web is economies of scale. It may feel far more personal, as individuals come out from behind the corporate veil, but they are still reaching for the masses at the lowest possible costs in time, dollars, and resources.

Mass personalization of the message is the future – look what Amazon has done with this around their user experience. Look for the same in future marketing strategies. The one-size-fits-all plan is out the window, but there are many ways to achieve economies of scale in marketing campaigns while creating deeply relevant and personalized messages for the audience. That is at the heart of efforts around micro-segmentation, online data collection (profiling), etc. (These can be used for good or evil – I want to acknowledge that up front) Marketers today need try to understand individuals and groups at the smallest relevant, and actionable, size in order to tailor offers and messages directly to their motivations, wants, and needs. The beauty of technology is this is becoming possible, and cost-effective, within the context of a mass market campaign.

If you define economies of scale narrowly, i.e. dropping one 30–second TV spot to appeal to 250 million potential customers, then I agree, that model is dying. However economies of scale through mass personalization is very much alive, and is the future of marketing.

[update: edited for dumb grammar mistakes and one non-sensical sentence]