Consumers have the voice - and the upper hand

No one quite agrees on when it ended, but the era of mass media in marketing is over. For over 80 years, from the beginnings of commercial radio in the 1920's to the explosive growth of digital media at the turn of the millennium, the focus of marketing was the sale of mass products to a mass market via mass media.

In the early days of mass marketing, it was purely a blind numbers game, the goal being to reach the largest possible audience. As in the old marketplaces of the world, speaking loudly in the places where the largest number of interested customers was likely to be found, will make the company win the largest consumer base.

The introduction of statistical techniques to mass marketing in the 1950's changed the game only slightly by injecting notions of targeting and measured results into the mix. But these only further removed the consumers from a direct relationship with the brand by "aggregating" them into "segments" of similar "demographic profile".

This approach worked well enough for decades; not because consumers did not want a deeper engagement with the brands, but because they could not imagine any alternative. A few of the more vocal amongst them wrote an occasional letter to the brand, but even these didn't really expect to be heard. With no media voice of their own, consumers were resigned to remaining silent partners.

All that has changed; today's always-on, always-connected consumers not only have the voice to be heard, but indeed have the upper hand over us as marketers because their adoption of new technologies is faster than ours, their reaction to new social trends is instantaneous, they often know more about our brands and the market than we do, and their access to hundreds of millions of "fellow consumers" is essentially free. They are also demanding of quality information, very protective of their time, and fickle about their choices of media – often moving from one media to the next and changing their "media mix" almost constantly. In effect, they are in control of the brand relationship.

As the communication touch points have multiplied, consumers have quite rightly come to expect advertising to follow. However their expectations for just how we communicate with them are strict. They don't want to be "marketed" and "advertised" to; they want to be "engaged" and they want to "interact" with us. They do not want to be "segmented"; they want "personalised communication". They do not want "broadcasts"; they want "relevant advertising". They do not want our brands' intrusion into their lives to interrupt their day; they want us to respect their time and their choice of when and where to interact.

This is not to say that the traditional media are out. Consumers still watch television, listen to radio, read print and drive outdoors. These venues remain an important touch point to convey brand personality and raise awareness.

But today's consumers expect us to provide them with a deeper, more flexible and more personally relevant brand experience beyond this initial one-way contact. This is where the New Media – whether online, in-store, or mobile – come in to engage, inform, entertain and listen to them.

This last point is the most important, and ultimately the most rewarding aspect of today's marketing landscape. As Christopher Vollmer, Vice President of Booz Allen Hamilton, recently wrote, "There is one overriding, simple, but powerful message for all twenty-first century marketing, media, and advertising executives: […] insight about consumer behaviour and preferences has become far too strategically important to depend on the research methods of the past; this is the currency that trumps all others".

So now that our consumers finally have voice, it's our turn – as in any polite conversation – to listen.