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Published on: 4/16/2007
Last Visited: 4/20/2007
"Consumers have gone from being dogs, who are responsive, eager, needy and when you whistle they come running, to being cats who have a life of their own, are not nearly as needy and come to you when they feel like it," says Alan Hallberg, Cisco's senior director of worldwide advertising and demand generation.It's a brave new marketing world, all right.So how can marketers, as Hallberg puts it, "rejig themselves when the audience is on stage and you're in the audience?"
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Hallberg suggests reducing investment in traditional direct marketing because when someone finds out about a new product, "they're not going to sit there and wait for a direct mail piece to show up."
After all, this is life for Consumers, 2.0: They believe the 30-second spot isn't dead, it's just a blur they fast-forward through on their PVRs.They have an instant worldwide audience on YouTube, where they post fake ads and rants or raves of your brands.They read online reviews before they buy new products, and do price comparisons before hitting the mall.They have blogs, Facebook accounts and a Second Life, where some avatars are leading boycotts against your virtual stores.
"We're just at the beginning of this thing," says Hallberg.