Punk Marketing
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
I'm reading a fascinating book right now called Punk Marketing, by Richard Laermer and Mark Simmons. Essentially, the authors talk about how the rules of marketing have radically changed, with greater power in the hands of the consumer.
The Content, Commerce and Consumer circles, which intersect, have shifted. Marketers have traditionally piggybacked their Commerce messages (commercials) onto Content (tv shows, radio programming, magazine articles) to reach Consumers. More and more, however, consumers are taking control and tuning out from traditional commercials. Tivo and other digital video recorders allow people to watch what they want when they want, skipping the commercials so they can watch an hour program in 40 minutes. MP3s allow consumers to listen to the music or programming they want, without the commercial interruptions. Increasingly, the content created by consumers themselves is of greater interest than that created by media companies (i.e., YouTube, blogs, more).
This means traditional marketers need to start thinking a little more creatively to reach their intended audiences (oh, and that's tougher too with 100 TV channels and zillions of web sites). The commercials need to become so interesting that people want to watch them. They need to be placed in places where the intended audiences are going (not just network TV anymore).
The book includes a Punk Marketing Manifesto with 15 articles. I hope to touch on more of them, but one just caught my attention. Article 10, Don't Be Seduced by Technology, points out that the media is not the message. The message is the message. Technology "is a catalyst for the shift of power from commerce and content providers to consumers. But ... the content is always most important and not the medium by which it is delivered." This blog, for instance, isn't credible because it's a blog. I hope it's credible because of the conversation it starts within an audience of people with diverse opinions. I'm confident that the end result will be a better understanding of our business and some ideas for how to make it better. The message is: We're in this together, and we're committed to making this business the best opportunity for people looking to achieve their goals, big or small. That means sharing and listening.
I know there are a lot of readers of this blog, and a few who comment. I hope more of you comment more frequently, because the power of a blog isn't in the original article posted, but the dialog that happens afterwards. THAT's where the juice is (that's a line from some forgettable movie, I'm sure). Punk Marketing grabbed my attention because of its title and its main premise, that we've undergone a radical shift in marketing and people need to change or die. We're in the middle of our transformation right now because to not change is the beginning of the end. I hope YOU are having a truly transformational year!