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| Media economy | |
mantra of dialogue Buyers be warned: The era of pushing ads is fast ending Feb 25, 2008 Media buying agencies just don’t get it. They'd better start getting it pretty soon. How people use media is changing dramatically, and the era of force-fed commercials is nearing an end. “To turn the tide, marketers will move to the connected agency, one that shifts from making messages to nurturing consumer connections.” The forces killing off the old system are twofold, and one is the explosion of media options that make no one medium a must-have experience. It's the end of mass media in which advertisers could push out their message and consumers were forced to accept that message as the price of admission. Pushing out messages has become particularly ineffective in reaching a generation that's grown up with social networking sites, videogames, interactive television and video-on-demand. They use those media as they please, often skipping commercials. The other major force of change is the internet experience that allows consumers to respond and react to those messages. Though initially threatening--do we want our competitors to know how little folks think of our product?--it wasn't long before shrewd marketers saw how this backtalk could be harnessed for good. This is not a new idea. It's been around since the early days of the internet. But as Kim observes, while it benefits agencies, it isn’t doing much for advertisers, and that failure to deliver will force agencies to change. “The talent and processes [in] creative and media agencies focus on delivering work efficiently for above-the-line media with large audiences and large budgets,” writes Kim. “As new media grows and asks for agility and speed, agencies can’t expect a quick fix of widening capability gaps.”
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