The Unselfish Future Of Marketing
Coca-Cola, Facebook Ads, and Interruptive Marketing
At one point, advertising was basically the same as a megaphone. The competition was about who could shout their brand, offer, or product the loudest.
Buy Hormel!
Drink Coca-Cola!
Be sure to drink your Ovaltine!
There were radio ads, billboards, and even little road signs that followed you along your highway drive.
In fact, advertising isn’t really all that different today. Companies jockey for expensive Super Bowl ads, or prime real estate in New York’s Time’s Square. The game is all about making sure that consumers think about the brand often.
Think about this, if you saw a red billboard with a white swoosh on it, you would immediately think of Coca-Cola. No text, no bottle, just two colors. That brand is instantly recognizable and they paid a lot of money to own that space in your head.
But this is purely selfish. It’s only about them and their sales.
I’m sure none of you are surprised by this. Isn’t that what capitalism is? Isn’t that the purpose of a business? To grow?
I think the conversation about the purpose of a business in a free market is a different post that I’ll get to eventually. In short, I don’t think the purpose of a business is to grow. Its purpose is to serve customers and sometimes growth helps to make that happen. Other times, growth creates unfair market conditions that don’t serve consumers.
In the meantime, the focus of this post is on the process of how companies tell the market about themselves.
Facebook Ads, TV commercials, and Billboards are all known as “interruptive marketing.” This is the idea that you were doing something and then you were interrupted by someone trying to tell you about themselves. Most of us hate this.
Google Adwords took the edge off a bit by serving you ads when you searched for specific terms, but even that isn’t altruistic. Google Adwords are auctioned to the highest bidder, not the most relevant or useful search result. That prioritizes the company, not the consumer. At least it’s not totally interruptive.
When you’re listening to a Pandora or Spotify music station, you probably don’t like when an ad interrupts the music. Radio stations brag about their “ad-free” blocks and even offer “double shots” where they play 2 songs in a row without any interruptions.
Compare this to say, a company offering to sponsor an ad-free playlist.
“This 90-minute, ad-free ‘Chill Work Music’ playlist was brought to you 3M. Have a productive day!”
I just made that up, but doesn’t that feel different? It’s a completely different message! I think this kind of advertising says something completely different to a consumer. It’s an anti-ad!
The Mad Men are dying.
The old kind of marketing and advertising is dying. People hate being interrupted to be told about something that benefits shareholders more than them.
The right thing for any business to do is to consider how they will empathize with their audiences and add value to their lives FIRST. In fact, I have a feeling that the next generation of consumers will have a much lower tolerance for selfish corporate bullshit—so, consider it a survival tactic, too.
Maybe, if we lead with value instead of an ask, someone might trust us enough to consider what we have to offer. And just maybe, if businesses start serving their customers first, we’ll live in a slightly better version of this world.
Ever heard of Companization? Not a marketing thing but I think you will find it interesting. Essentially a company/corporation has a "do good things" oversight branch that has partial oversight and voting power within the organization. This branch tries to make sure that the company is looking out for the environment while doing its normal business, whatever that may be. Profits are still a goal but within the oversight of doing no, or less, harm.