Cutting through the information clutter and facilitating customer relationships is vital to effectively marketing your brand in the new “attention economy.”
“Anybody who still thinks we’re operating in an information economy, think again. In this Internet world, there is too much information and it’s not getting any better,” said Dave Hutchinson, president, Conversion Partners, at AD:TECH Chicago, held July 12-13.
“This fact is placing an escalating premium on consumer attention. Which, in turn, is making attention itself the new common currency for modern marketing,” he said. “What is interesting about this notion of attention as a common currency is that once you understand this fact and embrace it, a lot of the other mysteries surrounding customer-centric marketing start to fall into place.”
Customer-centric marketing can be reduced to three guiding principles, according to Hutchinson. The first principle is that customer relationship management (CRM) has ultimately morphed into a business philosophy driven by marketing and supported by technology. The second principle is that media channels, be they online or offline, are collapsing into a single dialogue between brand and consumer and should be treated as such.
“And finally, in this noisy, hyper-competitive digital media landscape that we live in, attention is becoming the ultimate common currency for modern marketing. If you think of attention as a medium, it is the first medium where the consumer controls the inventory of this medium, not the Fortune 500 advertiser or the major media company or the ad agency,” Hutchinson said.
With all of this information swirling around and consumer attention being what all marketers are after, the industry has to be aware of the clutter line — or breaking point. It is at this point where consumers might begin to tune out all the clutter, including your marketing message.
“I think it’s fair to say that the industry is causing that clutter line. So far, advertising’s response to a louder and louder media landscape has been to get louder. But after the last 50 years of being extroverted as an industry, now is the time to get more introverted and more intimate and to look inward,” Hutchinson said. “Almost predictably, the industry is now looking back to entertainment as the vehicle or the Trojan Horse to break through the attention bubble of these savvy consumers who are filtering media from whatever direction it might be [coming].”
David Tokheim, senior director of consumer intelligence for Brisbane, CA-based IGN/GameSpy, agreed the volume of the messages have become a problem, adding that consumers demand relevancy to the information being provided.
“If you want to reach our audience … it is so important that you don’t [tick] them off. And how do you not [tick] them off? Through relevance,” Tokheim said.
“One of the programs we put together for the gaming companies and for the retailers was this framework from which they build their media plan. We call it the crescendo campaign. First you whisper, then you murmur, then you rap, then you preach then you scream. One of the problems we saw was everyone was screaming. All they wanted to do was scream [their message],” he said.
There’s room to “scream” the announcement of a new product to generate awareness as long as it’s part of a CRM plan, according to Scott Bailey, executive vice president of strategy and analysis for Target Base.
“But what we’re really talking about is moving beyond that introduction and talking about the relationship. And the relationship is all about relevance and interest. It may seem corny to say that someone is actually going to be interested in spending some time with a commercial rather than skipping beyond it. It really becomes more about a customer relationship value exchange,” said Bailey.
“What am I willing to spend on each one of those consumers to provide some sort of entertainment, offer or value in a way that encourages that value exchange to continue? It’s a very different way of thinking. It’s not an approach, it’s a business philosophy,” he said.
