Falling in Love 2.0: Why it’s ‘all change’ in the relationship rules?

The rules of the marketing game have changed. The command and control television era where big brands delivered heavyweight messaging every night to the nation, has finally melted away. In its place a radically new structure has emerged that will dominate the next twenty years of marketing.

Cultural evolution, catalysed by technology and typified by the web, has empowered media-savvy consumers with the tools to filter and select in a way never before possible. Customers initially were simply exercising greater control of their media, but doing this within the framework of a learned behaviour: television news would still be watched in the evening (albeit on time-delay thanks to the BBC), the internet edition of The Telegraph would replace the print title, search engines would replace the business to business press. But many consumers have crossed that stepping stone to reappraise their media altogether, exhibiting the behaviour of digital natives rather than immigrants.

In this new environment linear broadcast television may be dropped altogether. An iPod is as likely to carry the TV show as a plasma in the living room, newspaper home pages get replaced by the transient flows of an RSS feed reader, and the message platform spills across all devices. The result for advertising? The interruptive model of shouting for attention dies at the rate the number of people prepared to be shouted to dwindles. Make no mistake, media life has evolved.

Along the way, customer have been empowered by the new tools and their expectations have leapt. The transparency of price and service that many first experienced in the pages of PriceRunner and Kelkoo has become embedded in consumer culture. Brands may still command a premium, but maintaining that brand value and the scale of that premium will be major issues for firms.

In this new world, it’s no surprise that many brands are failing. Long before the web went mainstream, social analysts were tracking how the trust people place had switched from institutions to their friends, and with that an implication for how marketing should be delivered effectively.

If all this feels like a new world order, then the daunting reality is that we’re still only on the journey and far from the end. The sudden explosion of social media since 2005 is the starkest of reminders about how fast the tools of the digital networked society continue to unfold. Barriers to the flow of information have melted away, and though the consequences have barely been felt, the trend is unquestionable.

As blogging and social media moved from the margins to the establishment, the impact on commerce became clear. Groups on Facebook are changing the policies of brands like HSBC, bloggers like Supermarket Sweep Up publicise the practices of Tesco, traditional marketing gets distorted into caricatures of itself. The smallest of customers can still have the loudest of voices. Society will never go back.

So when brands talk about relationships, and searching for the ‘love’ they want customers to share, many do this through the lens of a relationship between parent and infant. But now that our infant has grown up, the unconditional belief they once held has evaporated, the context of the rest of the world is clear, they have the confidence to question, and know they can ask their friends.

Digital’s 5 things that get replaced

* Diversity and self-expression replaces conformism and unity
* The media of the masses replaces mass media
* Granular insights and data replaces generalisation
* Engagement replaces interruption
* Conversations in marketing replace control

Digital’s 5 things that get created

* Empowerment creates customers in control
* Digital channels create time
* Time creates communication opportunties
* Opportunity creates competitive advantage
* Transparency creates accountability

‘Falling in Love 2.0’ is about understanding these contexts and appreciating the new rules for successful loving relationships. Only an understanding of why media-savvy consumers tune out of classic media can create the right thinking that permits re-engagement. Only by earning the trust of their friends will brands get recommended by their friends, and only by investing time and energy in listening and building that relationship will there be a loving relationship.

It’s certainly ‘all change’ in the way most brands have behaved in their customer relationships, but isn’t what it’s changing into just how you like to be treated?


Si haces click en el titulo veras la nota completa. Customer & Relationships.