The Human Side of Marketing

I worked on a project at Razorfish to take a research-heavy approach to redesigning online experiences.  After poring over proprietary customer research, online surveys from our client's web properties, third-party research from Forrester, specialized industry analysis from firms like Compete, and almost any piece of related information we could find.

We gave ourselves a mandate to understand the customer expereince from their perspective; if we could solve their genuine problems online we'd win their hearts and their dollars for our clients.

So much of marketing is about the funnel, interacting with customers at several "stages" to push them toward a purchase.

And yet consumers of my generation and younger have become completely desensitized to advertising.  At least, we like to think that advertising has no effect on us. 

Are we beyond the point where mass advertising actually has any effect?  Most web users know about lowermybills.com and Jaguar.  Are we really supposed to tell Jaguar that its offline image, so expensively created via television advertising, is obsolete?  I think we're seeing that online efforts need to be compatible with offline efforts, now and in the past; most brands are not starting from scratch.  The status quo matters; if you're going to start a social media campaign tomorrow, you'll need to begin with where you are today.  What do your customers know about you, what do they love?  What kinds of stories do they want to tell you, share with their friends, or participate in?

I believe answering these questions to be key to the puzzle of social media engagement.
 Brands are tired of being ignored.  They want something that's two-way, when they are used to controlling a one-way conversaton.

In the past, there was far less information competition, so many fewer messsages about what is trendy, or useful, or the best choice for a problem.  And the messages can now be changed- discussion, parody, even citicism can outrun a brand's online or offline efforts with ease. 

So is the best solution "not to play" {imdb: war games]?  No, I think the lesson is to play smart. 

PLaying smart

Let's get rid of impression-based amrketing already.  If your ad spend on TV is positively corrlated with sales, and your company is [profitable, good for you, count yourself lucky.  But if TV seems like it's too expensive for what you actually get, and all of your affluent customers skip your ads with TiVo, you want to consider something different. 

You can't just "be around" when the customer