Disruptive Marketing is Disappearing --- or is it?
In his excellent Direct Creative Blog, Dean Risk recently posted an insightful article entitled "Reports of the death of advertising as we know it are greatly exaggerated." In the following paragraph, he responds strongly to the now popular idea that disruptive advertising, or advertising that is not controlled by the consumer, is fading away in the Internet age.
“My prediction? People love and respond to advertising far more than they’ll ever admit. And the interruption-disruption model may be tinkered with and modified, but it will never die. Ever. Because no matter what you call it, selling means pushing products. And if you aren’t pushing, you aren’t selling. And if you aren’t selling, you’re out of business.”
Here is my comment to Dean about the unchanging nature of what I choose to call “disruptive marketing.”
About Disruption Dying Out ---
Disruption is fundamental to all communications, not just selling. Every time we ask a question or talk to someone, we are disrupting his thought process or something he is doing.
Think of how the world turns --- the mall-intercept interview, the dog that wants to be petted, the sick child, the gardener knocking on the door for his check, the e-mail asking the recipient to complete a questionnaire and so on. Some interruptions are not pleasant, others are.
That's the way it is with selling products. Some we like and don't mind the interruption and others we don't.
And as you say, this activity is as old as man himself. It will never go away.
If companies ceased disrupting and interrupting, then they would cease selling. But no one ever should think that these disruptive activities are always distasteful.
It is true that some distasteful interruptions are dying out such as door-to-door selling and unwelcome phone calls. These were indeed out of control. But other means of communication like mail and online (except for email) are easily controlled by the customer.
New, distasteful disruptions have come with the growth of new media. Nine out of every ten emails bombard the inboxes with spam and the problem continues to grow in size and complexity. And the Internet has enabled identity theft to grow to epidemic proportions.
So things are changing, but consumers are hardly getting more control over every aspect of their new age lives.
Posted on Wednesday, January 23, 2008 at 04:17PM
by
Ted Grigg
in Direct Marketing Strategy, Online Marketing
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3 Comments
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1 Reference
Ted Grigg
in Direct Marketing Strategy, Online Marketing
|
3 Comments
|
1 Reference
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Reader Comments (3)
Studies show that despite what some people claim, most Americans actually like advertising, intrusive or not. There are some exceptions, of course, such as outbound telemarketing or door to door sales, which even I dislike. But these exceptions merely prove the rule that advertising is accepted and embraced by society. Not by people's words, but by their deeds. People will say, for example, that they hate all those catalogs, but when you grill them, you discover that they do order through catalogs. Same with direct mail, print, TV, radio, or any other medium. There wouldn't be so much of it if it didn't work.
Great point, Ted. After all, when I was scanning my feeds in NetVibes, the presence of this post, marked as unread, disrupted what I was doing! But why did I choose to click on it and read it? Two reasons: 1) The title of the post interested me, and 2) Because you've commented on my site, I know who you are.
In other words, for a disruption to be effective, two conditions are necessary: 1) Relevance, and 2) Legitimacy.
Point #1 is well understood in the marketing community, even if it's really hard to deliver on.
But point #2 isn't. You can't build legitimacy with disruptions. That has to come from something else.
Ron, you said: “You can't build legitimacy with disruptions. That has to come from something else.“
As you usually do, you got me to thinking.
There is no doubt that once you have experienced a relationship that building it further based on relevancy is much more effective. But I contend that relevant disruption is required at some level without the advantage of “legitimacy.” That is particularly true in reference to new customer acquisition.
Legitimacy can also mean credibility in this context. But your example stresses that prior knowledge of the writer and possibly reputation is the core meaning you assign to “legitimacy.” Let’s follow through with your analogy. You responded to my post due to the title and because you knew me.
In the beginning of some relationships, someone makes a contact that was endorsed by another contact or through some other trusted referent to start a dialog. That referral makes the contact legitimate and worthy of attention.
But what if there is no referral or little to no knowledge about the writer?
Then you assign legitimacy to my article by the sheer force of the headline. You might actually have commented without knowing me as long as you knew about the existence of the article. In this case, you identified with the subject matter because the subject matter itself was relevant to you.
I disrupted your normal path by presenting a relevant article to you through a third party. In this case, NetVibes feeds.
So I contend that disruption with relevancy alone without prior knowledge of the reputation of the advertiser or product works in many new business acquisition situations to attract new customers.
New customers may not know the company beyond some vague notion of what they produce or not at all. But it is only when the company speaks to prospects’ high priority needs and communicates how the offered product fulfills those needs that the message and product become relevant.
And this ability to write copy that moves the target audience with relevancy in the absence of fully developed legitimacy (or none) is what separates the great direct response copywriter from the average one.