The Changed Face of Marketing
In 1953, almost 60 years ago, in his American Marketing Association presidential address, Professor Neil Borden of Harvard Business School, introduced the term “marketing mix” and in 1960 E. Jerome McCarthy supplemented that concept with the 4 P’s of Marketing. Ever since then, every student of marketing has learned the 4 P’s of marketing; Product, Pricing, Promotion, Placement. In recent years, and not for the first time, these once-seen as fundamental concepts are coming under scrutiny in the wake of a dramatically altered landscape.
The reality is that consumers shop differently than they did 50 years ago and expect different things from your brand. First, consumers want to learn about your product on their time. Traditional push, top-down, or inside-out oriented marketing from the marketing department that interrupts a consumer experience is ineffective. Think TiVo, iPod, pop-up blockers. Sure, they’ll consume your media – when they want to – not when it is pushed on them. Why don’t commercials get TiVo’d during the Super Bowl? It is part of the experience, for some it is the most important experience, of watching the Super Bowl.
