Marketing Trends

If you searched the Web for definitions of marketing you will probably get tens of different explanations of the word and what it is supposed to do for a business. However, none of these definitions accounts for the fact that in order marketing to be effective it has to be relevant to the consumer – to their current wants and needs, to what they are looking for at the moment. Relevant has become key word in marketing. People no longer want to get the universal messages targeted at the mass market; they want anticipated personal and relevant messages. Delivering this type of messages in the form people want to get them when and where they want to get them has become the main goal of advertisers. For that reason there has been a steady decrease in the utilization of conventional mass media and an increase of the use of the internet and other more personalized media for the purposes of marketing. In this era of e-marketing the concept of permission marketing has emerged. Unlike the traditional form of marketing, permission marketing is all about obtaining authorization from the potential targets of your message to send them this message. It requires that people first “opt-in”, rather than allowing them to “opt-out” only after the advertising messages have been sent. This concept ties really well with the idea that any form of marketing has to first be relevant in order to be effective. Because in today’s hectic world people do not have the time to receive messages they do not care about, they search for meaning and meaning has become the step before action. In order to attract people’s attention, marketers should make something remarkable, something worth talking about that contributes to a person’s unique story they want to be telling other people. Because every product we buy tells other people who we are. So marketers are no longer selling products, they are selling image and people make the buying decisions they make because they want to be associated with the story a particular product tells. For that reason there has been a boom of image and emotional marketing. What this means is that marketers are promoting the image, or general perception, of a product or service, rather than its functional attributes. And by doing that they are trying to stimulate word-of-mouth. The way this works is very simple – the only thing marketers should do is make something worth talking about and then tell people who want to hear about it of its existence then these people would tell other people and so forth. The true value of word-of-mouth is that it is a person-to-person rather than mass media advertising and it is generated by consumers who liked a particular product which makes it more reliable than any traditional form of advertising. In addition, it is unpaid because it occurs spontaneously. However, marketers have no control over what people say, how, where, when and to whom they say it. As a result of all these changes in the marketing world several trends have emerged in the advertising sphere.

Ø Untraditional Billboards
The days of the flat billboard are over. In recent years billboards have become multidimensional, showing characters, buildings, cars and even whole rooms (Absolut or Calvin Klein hanging down from buildings in Manhattan). But now marketers are becoming more creative, incorporating the billboards directly into the environment. In fact, the billboards add to the ambience of the space the consumer moves through. They are part of the reality the consumer feels and experiences instead of just something additional to look at. Examples include LEGO which with a billboard making a whole building look like it was built of LEGO blocks, the toy-manufacturer won the Cannes Lions Grand Prix. LEE Jeans that initiated guerilla marketing campaign and took over an entire city to promote the opening of their new store. LEE Jeans were hanging from power lines over streets and covered parking meters. Manholes were painted with “LEE” and bar coded stickers were handed out as coupons for use at retail locations. The sportswear manufacturer Adidas created a huge overpass billboard at the Munich airport for the Soccer World Cup in Germany this summer. Featuring goalkeeper Oliver Kahn, the board stretched over a multilane road showing consumers the biggest ball they would see during the World Cup. The new billboard campaigns show once again, that advertisements can be a lot of fun. Consumers feel engaged as ads become less of a nuisance and more a part of the daily environment they can respond to with a laugh.

Ø Reality Advertising
Reality advertising takes the idea of consumer-generated media and consumer generated advertising a step further. Marketers are not only looking for input from their target group, they are letting consumers create the marketing for a certain product. Equipped with the product, the selected consumers are asked to document their experience – like a self-made reality show, more or less. Examples include the Chevy Livin’ Large campaign in which Chevy asked 14 students from seven US universities to live for one week in the Chevy AVEO, parked on their campus. Through web cams and daily blog entries the students were visible not only for their peers but for the entire nation. Similarly, Nissan chose a customer to live for 7 days in the new Nissan Sentra. The website features a blog and a short film by “customer” Marc Horowitz which shows him doing everything he would do on a normal day from his car. At the beginning of October Intel launched the Intel Centrino Duo Blogger Challenge,giving six laptops to well-known bloggers and challenging them to share their views on blogging, the blogosphere and technology. There is an expert blogger on gadgets on technology, on family issues, on food, the city, videos, and a mystery blogger. Whoever could guess the identity of the mystery blogger right, received a prize from Intel. Apart from the promotional aspect, the aim of the campaign has been “to stimulate discussion and bring bloggers together regardless of their categories.” With all the hype around consumer-generated media, reality advertising campaigns hit the “zeitgeist”. Furthermore, reality advertising play into the trend of experiential marketing and reality-media both popular amongst consumers so we are sure to see more popping up around global hotspots in the near future.

Ø Marketing on Second Life
Second Life, shortly SL, is a rapidly growing 3D virtual reality, developed by the San Francisco based company “Linden Labs”. Since October the population has increased about 41% and the media hype just began. Like in Massive Multiplayer Games, thousands of users interact in this virtual surrounding at the same time. Instead solving quests, like it is usual in games, the residents of SL are trading among each other and they build up their own surrounding. Only the land is given by Linden Labs. The hype around Second Life has also reached the higher managements of blue ship companies, universities and governments. So settlements of Adidias, Harvard University, the US government and others have been launched during the last months. Other companies and organizations with presence in Second Life include Reuters news agency that now has a correspondent from Second Life; Toyota that offers an official virtual edition of the Scion xB; the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Earth System Research Laboratory (ESRL) which has created an island in Second Life where they demonstrate fluid dynamics; and many more. Being present in a virtual world can offer quite a few benefits from a marketing perspective. Testing and interacting with (potential) consumers becomes possible in a cheap way. The presence in the virtual world is also a must for companies, which run campaigns concerning their innovative spirit. Besides the marketing aspect, Second Life offers a great potential for social networkers, who are bored by myspace and openbc.

Ø Mapvertizing
This term denotes the use of Google Maps as a marketing platform. Since March this year businesses increasingly have integrated Google Maps to show locations or to help users track something down: Transportation companies offer transit and rail maps, you also can check the traffic and find parking spots via Google Maps. There is a huge variety of weather maps, travel maps and even real estate maps. Statistics and demographics can be tracked via Google Maps as well as history or current events. You can find fitness and recreation spots, dates or specialty stores. There are maps about music, movies and even crime. The integration of information sources paired with Google’s mapping technology is called a “mash up“. And the Google Maps creation tools make it easy for almost everybody and any group to start their own Google Maps tracking service, sharing pictures, locations, information. Some marketers that have already taken advantage of this new fashion in the advertising world are SuperHighStreet, a virtual shopping interface that allows consumers to walk down the street, view store fronts and click on them to go inside, which means in that case to enter their website; Earthalbum – the newest innovation in video and image mashups which uses Google Maps to browse Flickr pictures and YouTube videos; and FindbyClick which helps consumers to find the closest coffee shops in their area. Although there are already many, many websites using the Google Maps interface we probably can expect many more. This easy-to-use interface allows consumers to explore the web in a way they would explore the real world. Services like SuperHighStreet which are adding real-time sound, pictures and videos are definitely going the right way, letting the virtual traveler experience the whole world right from their computer screen. As connections will still become faster and the quality of broadband will increase, virtual explorations via pictures and videos will gain more and more popularity. Maybe the old-fashioned search via words and links will soon not be of any attraction any more.

Ø Skypecasting
Skype’s online software enables users to make free phone calls via the Internet. With 29 million registered users, the company is one of the biggest VoIP providers (Voice over Internet Protocol). A new feature, called Skypecasting allows phone conversations with up to 100 people. Skypecasting is a merger of Skype and podcasting, as the new services allows sharing recorded conversations as well as live conversations via Internet telephony. In general the Skypecast live conversation is controlled by the host, who can mute or blend out disruptive participants. Up to 100 people can listen and participate. If recorded, the conversation, concert or any other audio-event can be shared afterwards via Skypecast like a podcast. But not only private consumers are using Skypecast to share their audio, corporate businesses are starting to use Skypecast for advertisement campaigns, often in collaboration with musicians and other celebrities. Two examples of companies that utilized Skypecasting for their ad campaigns are the beer-manufacturer Heineken and Moodle. In the Heineken Skypecast, the Dutch band Johan played songs of their new album and the up to 100 listeners were able to ask questions to the band members. Supposedly the Heineken campaign was the first live concert broadcasted through Skype. There is also a video online now and, of course, fans can still listen to the recorded Skypecast, win promo-CDs, and get lots of information about Johan and “Heineken Bier”. Moodle is the biggest open source course management system in the world, designed to help educators who want to create quality online courses. It now also incorporates Skypecast as a new feature, which enables the students and their teacher to communicate live. Now they’re not limited to listening to podcasts but also to live discussions and participating in Q&A-sessions. Skypecast has opened a whole array of new possibilities for podcasters, advertisers and educators. Most ideas are even provided and developed by the users themselves. As Skypecast is free we will see it incorporated in a huge variety of open source systems. Also more and more private users, bloggers and podcasters will use Skypecast to distribute their audio content. Although Skype does not especially support uses like private radio stations, the company encourages its users to find possible applications. Another possibility might be to turn an MP3 player into a radio station for Skype users.

It seems fun, interactive, relevant, and out-of-the-box are some the key words in the world of marketing today and we can only wonder where the next place we see an ad is going to be.

Wanna Dance?

If you fell in love with the wingless heroes of last year's documentary hit "March of the Penguins," prepare to surrender completely to George Miller's computer-animated musical/adventure "Happy Feet."

In the year of the animated movie, this one soars above them all.

The Warner Brothers Pictures animation movie, “Happy Feet” relates to the great nation of the Emperor Penguins. Dropped as an egg during a gyration by his Elvis-impersonating father, Memphis (Hugh Jackman), Mumbles is hatched without the ability to sing, a devastating handicap in a culture where couples mate through song. But boy, he can surely tap dance.

Though Mumble’s mummy Norma Jean (Nicole Kidman) thinks this habit is cute, dad Memphis says,” it ain’t penguin! ”. Besides, they both think that without a heart song, Mumble would never find his true love.

As fate has it, his one friend and hoped-for mate Gloria (Brittany Murphy) happens to be the best singer around. Mumble and Gloria have a connection from the moment they were hatched but she struggles with his hippity-hippoty way. Mumble is just too different, especially for Noah (Hugo Weaving), the elder of the flock who casts him out of the community.

Over the course of the movie, which will follow him on a mission to find out why the emperor penguins' fish supply is disappearing, his dancing ability will become a colony-saving asset. The action sequences - in which Mumbles encounters killer sharks, a vicious sea lion, elephant seals and an icebreaker ship, and takes several trips down the slopes of glaciers - make Pixar's "Cars" look like it's standing still. And the music keeps the audience's feet tapping, too.

"Happy Feet" is not only the year's best animated movie, it's one of the year's best movies, period. Go.

The movie was released on November 17 and has already won the hearts of both critics and the audience. To promote the debut of the animation the French agency Megalos has developed the HappyFeet-Dance minisite where people are invited to upload their own tap dance videos to enter into the “Happy Feet Dance Competition” for a chance to win a trip to Australia and a flight over Antarctica.

There is all sorts of fun staff you can do on the website. You can not only read about the movie, watch trailers and other people’s videos and rank them but also download different wallpapers and a screensaver for your computer. Another thing you could choose to download is one of the nine cute, fun Happy Feet characters and animated backgrounds from the brand new Yahoo avatar suite that are guaranteed to get your feet tapping.

The site of course has a link to the official Happy Feet website – www.HappyFeet.co.uk. It also gives you the opportunity to send it as an e-card to a friend. The fact that more than 18 000 people have voted for one of the videos is enough to show how successful viral marketing can be. A great complement to a great movie.