I’m having an interesting Facebook wall-to-wall debate with my friend Liddie about mass marketing. I’m going to post my latest rant here for everybody to enjoy. Feel free to join in.
Mass advertising is like flinging things at a wall and hoping something will stick. That makes it too often an annoying, intrusive, obnoxious, irrelevant, unwanted waste of my time (with the exception of the mini-wheats commercial, they should make a show out of that).
Consumers go through every means to block, skip or ignore commercials. If I’m not looking for dish washing soap, I don’t want to hear about it. Companies should focus on creating great products instead of trying to sell crap with interruption marketing. People will tell each other about great products, that’s how you generate awareness.
Look at the fasted growing brand in the world: Google. Never ran any mass advertising campaign. Second fasted growing brand: Zara. Also no on mass. Fifth fasted growing brand: Starbucks, virtually no mass. Third and fourth fasted growing brands: Apple and Nintendo. They do run mass but that’s not the reason for their success; iPod and Wii are word-of-mouth phenomenas and so are Google, Zara and Starbucks.