Power To The People

Mass marketing took off with the distribution of the radio and television in homes across the world, but as we know, this was a one-way format that allowed companies to rain down their message of choice on the consumers.  The mass of consumers were often too fragmented and disorganized to create a message clear and loud enough to reach the ears of the companies leadership.  The Internet certainly revolutionized this dynamic to give the people a voice, but what does this mean for the marketer at the company looking to spread a message?

The marketer must realize first, that the company no longer enjoys a position high and above the consumer base, but has been pulled down to equal footing surrounded by consumers, both loyal and disgruntled.  Secondly, in a pseudo-coming of age story, the consumers have shown now that they have less and less trust in the messages being generated by large corporations, but they have faith in the recommendations of their peers.  In this way, the public, with their blogs, 5-star review ratings, and social networks have taken over the marketing of the firm.  The CMO at the corporation, no longer sets the message.  The public does.

As a result, the marketer’s role has shifted now to become more of a public relations manager.  For the company, having a customer base of thousands willing to share a key message to a friend is invaluable.  The trouble is getting a critical amount of momentum generated to carry it through and creating a monitoring system to limit its break down.  Remember playing the phone game where a group of people would stand in a line and the first would whisper a message into the ear of the person next to them, who would repeat it to the next all the way down the line until the last would say out loud what they heard?  That is a perfect example of message entropy.  This happens to marketing messages as well, but it can be reduced if the message is married to something the audience is already associated with.

Just like name associations that help you remember the name of someone you just met, tying a positive and relatable association to the companies message will increase the number of customers who carry the message through their network as well as its ability to stay clear.  Social causes are a perfect vehicle for this.  Undoubtedly, there will be some marketers who stick to the old methodology of raining mass messages down through every media channel they can get their hands on.  As the world moves forward though, it will be those who have started early to build strong and vigorous networks of customers well skilled in the art of message dissemination that will have a sustainable competitive advantage in the future.  The people own the brand and they will be the champions of it, as long as we give them something worth carrying on.