Published by Don 1 year, 11 months ago
in General.
WHILE THE MARKETING WORLD IS PREOCCUPIED WITH TRYING TO “FIX” ADVERTISING, EVERYONE IS MISSING THE SIMPLE FACT THAT CONSUMERS HAVE ALREADY SOLVED THE PROBLEM.
Admittedly, it’s a tough concept to swallow, but consumers have moved on. They’re making decisions without us. They’re the most connected, well-informed buyers this world has ever known. And their insatiable appetite for text, email, blogs, social networking and the like has enabled them to share opinions and recommendations in ways no one ever imagined.
An interesting side effect of all this “connecting” is how it’s caused the masses to segment into smaller communities who share common interests, styles, aspirations and again, recommendations. When these communities discover a brand that seems made for them, they quickly adopt it. When a brand feels broad and disconnected, they ignore it. Mass marketers who overlook this shift will continue to lose relevance.
Unless, and this is a big unless, marketers can re-think their approach and make brands intensely relevant to groups of individuals instead of the masses.
At Evolve Media, I like to think that we’re, in our own small way, influencing the connection between consumer and brand through holistic design and technology. Many times, we go the extra mile and are called upon to break a brand down to its basic elements and then re-imagine it, above and beyond what we were originally engaged to do.
Social Networking in the last year has taken a new shape. As many folks continue to sign up with social networks, some are moving beyond the network model into more of a social streaming or life-streaming model. This new model seems to offer the best of several worlds, literally. New, socially-aware content aggregators are helping socially adept, bloggers and community participants share at a meta level. Newly adopted services such as FriendFeed, allow their users to share a wide-range of social activities.
For example, a video posted on YouTube, a blog entry on your personal or business blog and a post in Facebook will all show up in your FriendFeed. Currently, 43 services are monitored by FriendFeed for their users. So if you’re listening to music on Pandora or last.fm and posting photos on Flickr, FriendFeed is monitoring your activity. The information is then neatly delivered via RSS. Embed code is also available for your website or just add their Facebook application to your Facebook site.
Combine additional activity from your friends and family and things start picking up quickly. As interest grows, social participation becomes more or less apparent in your sphere of influence.
If you’re very socially active in one or more of the services monitored by FriendFeed, your popularity may increase. Ahh, in walks another marketing technique and the reason for this post, “brand streaming“. Although the business case for using FriendFeed and “brand streaming” is still developing, life streaming aka life-casting is already proving to be a valuable tool in developing brand recognition.
More to come as we monitor the effectiveness of life streaming at increasing brand awareness.
