Earlier this week, I had the pleasure of presenting Smart Marketing in a Dumb Economy through WOMMA’s wonderful series of webinars. (By the way: if you missed the live event, you can check it out with audio!) As expected, the audience had lots of excellent questions—including “how do you convince a reluctant executive to experiment with digital and social media?” “Who within an organization ‘owns’ the conversation?” and the infamous “How and what do you measure exactly?”

I did my best to answer each of them—but there was one question that came via email after the webinar that I couldn’t resist sharing and answering here.

Q: You mentioned that companies are moving away from spending large amounts on traditional advertising (TV spots, print ads, etc.) instead opting for targeted marketing and creating experiences, mainly online. Do you think this trend is mainly due to economics or is targeted marketing proving more effective, or both? Once the economy improves, do you think companies will move away from monitoring and targeted marketing to return to the spray and pray, or is this a permanent shift away from that model?

If we may share the Infiltrators’ perspective…

Traditional advertising has a few undeniable advantages.

• It’s familiar. Marketers have been relying on traditional media for decades. It’s simply what we know.
• It’s sexy. Or at least… it’s perceived to be. Agencies have long coveted their awards and their reels and clients have long enjoyed the prestige that goes with a killer TV spot. Reminds me of vanity license plates and the sunglasses that are so popular nowadays with the giant “D&G” carved in to the side.
• It’s the easiest way to blast your message to a mass audience. Unfortunately, blasting a mass message is beginning to sound like the definition of “SPAM” and, in the not-too-distant future, “POLLUTION”. Also, the idea of a ‘mass audience’ is quickly going the way of the dodo. But I digress…

Change is hard. When you’ve been doing something for a long time, it’s a tad uncomfortable to try a new approach. Especially if in the past your approach has been wildly successful. Which is why, until the recent economic turbulence kicked us all in the collective behind, most companies and most agencies were quite happy to ignore alternative marketing channels or to view them as “scraps” that get added on to a traditional media campaign with the leftover dollars.

Today, everyone’s wallet is a bit lighter. Some industries (you know who they are) are hemorrhaging cash or—even worse—asking for handouts from the rest of us. (As if selling us crap—and I do mean crap—wasn’t enough! The nerve!) This means many marketers simply can’t afford to bombard us with TV ads. They have no choice but to get creative; to shift their dollars and their brains away from paid media and toward the earned variety. Cliche as it sounds, necessity is indeed often the mother of invention. Or something like that.

The second part of your question deals with the “is this temporary or permanent” issue. Some argue (hope?) that once the economy recovers, we can all go back to The Glory Days of buying our way into the homes of our customers.

We say, not so fast. There is a bigger shift in the works than simple economics. We are becoming more digital. More mobile. More multi-channel and multi-screen. This point is particularly salient among youth who were “born wired” and don’t relate to our Pavlovian addiction to TV Guide. They consume media on their terms; on their device of choice. They detest SPAM. They know how to turn your broadcasts OFF.

But it’s not just the youngins that are drifting from the large screen to the smaller ones. It’s happening everywhere. The Kindle. The iPod. The iPhone. The DVR. And so on.

If there is one thing you can count on (and it’s clearly not the economy), it’s the growing expectation among ALL consumers of ALL ages to have a say in how, when, and where they consume information.

Which is a very long-winded way of saying: no, this ain’t temporary.

But there’s another important part of the original question worth discussion, and that is this: is targeted marketing more effective?

At the risk of answering a question with a question… is it more effective to water the entire neighborhood when it’s your lawn that you’re hoping to grow? No, of course not.

“Spray and pray” used to work in the past in part because everyone watched TV. At predictable times. And frankly, there weren’t too many other options.

Today, the options are virtually infinite. Creativity has some really fertile ground in which to grow.

We do so hope to see more of it!