The advertising industry has certainly seen a dramatic change in its medium throughout the last decade. As always, advertisers have had to keep up with the emerging technology over the last century to ensure reaching as many consumers as possible, evolving from poster boards to cinemas, cinemas to radio, radio to television, and from television to viral. Ad's like Proctor & Gamble's (P&G) Old Spice commercial featuring former NFL wide receiver, Isaiah Mustafa show just how profound the change to viral has been on the industry. With a record breaking 20 million views on YouTube and 145 million views on the Old Spice YouTube channel, Wieden & Kennedy, the agency behind the successful ad campaign, have substantially raised the bar for its competitors, winning both an Emmy and the Cannes Film Lions Grand Prix. In addition, sales for Old Spice sky-rocketed up to 107 % in the four weeks following the ad's premier (although much of this is due to a series of buy-one-get-one-free coupon initiatives released by Old Spice in April of last year).
Regardless, it seems irrevocable to those in the industry just how powerful popular, viral support can be for increasing sales. In addition, much of Old Spice's success has been to an interactive medium, with Mustafa responding to blogger questions and comments in person on YouTube's Old Spice channel. An emphasis is therefore being taken away on what the brands have to share and say to its consumers and is flipped around so that consumers can instantly give feedback and dictate what they do and don't want. While this certainly makes things easier for advertisers, since arguably the most difficult part of the industry is knowing exactly what consumers desire, it also raises the stakes on creativity and keeping up the consumer's wants and needs at lightning speed.
Although this is, of course, not necessarily new to the the trade; advertisers have always had to be at the forefront of emerging trends and consumer markets. However, the consumers' ability to interact with the advertiser has brought with it a new-age of advertising and a whole new feel to the game, allowing the power of the consumer to more easily dictate the future of the business.
Julian, very interesting (one day you'll have to tell me your fascination with marketing!) and i really like the youtube videos. I found some of your analysis hard to understand. it seemed a bit dense. I think you can stick with a serious analysis voice - you don't have to be haha funny just because it's a blog. But you do have to be understandable. Very good!
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