Changing the Game

Marketing in the Digital Age

I say, now marketers have it easy. All this technology has certainly facilitated an ease of gathering information. Data, the lifeblood of marketing, can now be collected and collated at the click of a button. The world wide web is a tsunami of information. As marketers, it is our ability to ride this wave that will be the measure our success in the business.

The world and the people in it is a rapidly evolving organism of communication and socialization. As we venture towards the future we once considered science fiction, everything we once imagined is slowly turning into reality. The addage "Impossible is nothing.", identified with the brand with 3 stripes, comes to mind. We humans seem to have an insatiable need of speeding everything up. Instant coffee, instant noodles, instant messenger. We want everything NOW. So we make it happen. Messages that took weeks to deliver now happen almost instantly through the wonders of the internet and magic of the cellphone. What's even more amazing is the marrying of these two technologies, MOBILE INTERNET. (I am currently on a bus to Cubao as I type this up.) As a consumer I feel empowered! As a marketer I think this is brilliant! In this day and age almost everyone you want to reach has an e-mail address or a cellphone, our very own digital DNA. Knowing your consumer has now become an infinitely simpler task.

The shift from traditional media to digital media is now so powerful that it turned a black man into the President of the United States of America.

People now choose what they want to hear and see and cannot be force-fed or pushed media. They won't wait to see your TVC's they have TiVo. They won't wait for tomorrow's newspaper they'll log on to CNN.com and upload their iReports and make the news themselves. Consumers today are the new producers of media.

They'll log on to Facebook and "Like" the ads they see on the screen and in turn their friends will see it and will be more likely to check it out. Because we are social beings and social approval = digital thumbs-up.