Marketing Innovation and Paradigm Shifts

Besides the technology changing, marketing paradigms are shifting such that the way we think about marketing is changing. Most remember the admonition to move from being product centric to customer centric, or the choice being between a “push” strategy and a “pull” strategy or doing both.  There wasn’t a neither choice.  Marketing innovation can expand beyond technology and techniques and include frameworks or paradigms.

For example, the shift can be much larger than new technologies, e.g. writing ads for smart phones and tablets versus television sets or using Facebook as a communications media. Marketers were trained to be experts in outbound marketing in a world that was moving toward Inbound marketing. Marketing was focused on reach as in reach, frequency and gross ratings points, and reaching the right segment, in a world that was moving to discovery; discovery through SEO, PPC, affiliate links, and personalized recommendations. Personalization was helping us reach segments of one. The world is moving from monologue to dialogue, from one screen to multiple screens, from developing an annual campaign to real-time marketing.

When you do not realize the paradigm has changed, you see new technologies through your old way of thinking and end up with e.g.  Banner ads, pop-ups, interstitial ads, taking over a home page, or sending out digital versions of junk mail.  When television first arrived and advertisers were trying to figure out how to use this new medium, the first TV ads looks very much like visual radio ads. The actors who used to stand up and read copy over the air in radio were doing the same thing, except now they were on television doing it.  Later companies decided to create their own daytime programs such as daytime dramas or Soaps as a way to attract a largely female audience.  (They created content) With the new medium, they needed to do things in a new way, they had to change their way of thinking. TV was not radio with pictures and Web sites were not digitized versions of collateral material.

Even the same words mean something different when you change your point of reference. For example, we were told to “listen” to the customer and in the Tom Peter’s book, “In Search of Excellence” he uses the example of executives who from time to time answer customer service calls as a way of listening to the customer.  We learned to incorporate the “Voice of the Customer”  research as a way to listen to the customer. Think of how different that is from “listening” to customers talk about our product on social media where we can hear their thoughts unfiltered, or simply asking them through our social channels.

Does Phillip Kottler’s Principals of Marketing have a chapter on Content Marketing where he discusses content curation, and user generated content? I remember learning about user groups and affinity groups but not online communities. In some ways they are similar, but in other ways they are different and if you treat them as if they are the same, you will be making a big mistake.

It’s easy to see a technological change, as we look at a QR code or augmented reality for the first time. It’s much harder to see a paradigm change as it does not have its own booth at the Consumer Electronics show or SXSW.

When you don’t realize the paradigm has changed, you end up using the new technology ineffectively. I still remember the difference between how then candidates Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and John McCain used social media. All three had money and resources  but their use of social media and its effectiveness was quite different. When you don’t realize the paradigm has shifted, you put yourself at a real disadvantage.

How can you tell if a shift is taking place besides reading publications and going to conferences? Look at how challenger brands and start-ups are using new technology to attract customers. Often the new technology is less expensive, which is why start-ups find it attractive to use. Banner ads and e-mail were and still are a fraction of the cost of display ads and direct mail. Emerging technologies lend themselves to new guerrilla marketing techniques. Which firm in your industry is most likely to be using guerrilla marketing?   When you go to a conference and look at the exhibitors, ask yourself is this company providing a way to do what we always do faster or cheaper or with better quality, or are they providing a product or service that will let us do something entirely different? How out of the box is their new product? The ones who are trying to do something “Crazy” are the ones you should probably spend more time.

Other sources for discovering innovative techniques will be discussed by Ad agencies, consulting firms and new technology providers/vendors via case studies, whitepapers, use cases, etc. But they may not know a whole lot more than you. This is an opportunity to look beyond the specific technology and ask the larger question, is this a new way to think about marketing?  We need to constantly challenge ourselves and ask if our thinking is out of date and be ready for the answer to be yes.