The following is also my column in this week's Advertising Age.
The Stimulation Economy
The American consumer has long been addicted to stimulation. We crave coffee, cigarettes, alcohol and sugar - even though we know the downsides. Now add technology to this list.
Our rising addiction to digital stimulation is having a profound impact on consumer habits - and, therefore by association, marketers. The technology treadmill is catapulting all of us into a perpetual state of instant gratification. Infotech is like sugar. The more we take in, the more it leaves us with insatiable unfilled cravings.
Even in a downturn, our appetite for all that burns batteries remains evergreen. According to a survey conducted by Retrevo, consumers plan to spend more on gadgets and electronics this holiday season than they did last year. The smartphone, as one CNN.com reader recently characterized it, is the new utensil at the dinner table, like it or not.
What this means for brands is that we must continually feed the beast, not fight it. We must stimulate and titillate - or go home. Technology is slowly making us all go ADD, creating havoc for marketers who hope to captivate with new products, brand extensions and ad creative. This mandates that we regularly keep things fresh.
While no one has made a clear statistical link between our craving for shiny new techie things and marketing's tectonic shifts, there are signs that they are in fact very much related.
Let's start with the almighty ad campaign.
Where once a powerful idea could fill a brand's coffers for months or even years, today a narrative must be regularly re-invented and re-told - perhaps even weekly - to ensure that it continues to captivate. Real-time feedback in the form of tweets, clicks, searches and more makes it easier to gather the data we need, but it does not necessarily help us act on it.
The demise of the campaign (or at least its reinvention) may in part be what is contributing to CMO tenure - and vice versa.
With the average stay for a chief marketing officer hovering at 23 months, according to Spencer Stuart, execs are not waiting around to cut bait on agencies and ideas. On the flip side, the revolving CMO door is certainly influenced by the breakneck pace of technology and rapidly changing media consumption patterns.
Another victim of the stimulation economy? It just maybe the 30-second spot.
Nielsen reports that traditional television remains more popular than ever. Time spent watching TV grew by two more hours per month in the first quarter of 2010.
Despite this encouraging trend, however, the 30-second spot - long advertising's old faithful - is being devoured by shorter 15-second ads that are spread out across shows. According to Nielsen, 15-second spots increased more than 70 percent in five years. Brands that cater to young men, such as Old Spice and Dos Equis, are leading the way in running teasers that stitch together a narrative, rather than trying to tell it in a single, longer ad.
Finally there's the new product pipeline.
The proliferation of technology is propelling us deeper into our interests while making it easy for us to ignore everything else. Sports fans and fashionistas become more die-hard enthusiasts, while every day another polymath dies and is not replaced. This, arguably, is one reason why marketers are rapidly turning to brand extensions.
According to Information Resources Inc., food and beverage brand extensions - which are often tailored to psychographics like healthy living - averaged one-year sales of $28 million in 2009 vs entirely new brands, which recorded an average $15 million in revenues.
While technology isn't responsible for the brand extension boom, there is no doubt in my mind that Google and Facebook are slowly re-wiring us to be even more attracted to a psychographic state we already identify with or at least aspire to attain. This changes buying behaviors.
Finally, while hard evidence remains elusive and anecdotal, there are signs that the companies that regularly innovate in social media seem to be more memorable.
When industry conversations turn to social, the same names keep popping up. These include Starbucks and Pepsi (disclosure - we work with both on the PR side), as well as Google and Ford. What they all share in common is a commitment to rapid innovation and iteration. I believe this helps them break through the noise.
The unmistakable trend here is simple - we must innovate or die. That's not a new theme, of course, but our society's burgeoning addiction to technology stimuli will force marketers to more quickly iterate and also bail on what's not working.
This is not always a good thing, but it is the reality of living in a complex world.
Posts
0 comments:
Post a Comment