• The face and practices of advertising, and by extrapolation, of marketing, will have to evolve in line with our society which is in a flux of shifting value systems, advancing technological capabilities, and an unprecedented choice of often parity goods and services with the associated increase in advertising messages. Four main change drivers point to this argument:

  • Technological development increases the marketer or advertiser’s ability to target and reach the individual consumer at ever increasing frequencies and degrees of intimacy.
  • Sociologists and anthropologists have identified the next evolutionary level in society, namely post-materialism and post-consumerism. This evolving system of values emphasises a momentum-gaining concern and interest in Quality of Life, with all its individualised expressions, as opposed to the pure economic growth motives of the industrial age.
  • A sub-text to this post-materialist society is the upsurge of strong risk aversion attitudes and values, especially in the developed world. Part of the characteristics of our emerging risk society is a growing self-reflection about science, technology and progress in general, i.e. the problems, be they real or perceived, resulting from techno-economic development itself.
  • Consumers are taking charge more and more. For example, a widespread perception that political and institutional change and solutions to social problems have been piecemeal and limited, or even are the cause of the problems, has resulted in consumers often politicising their choice, i.e. consumers operating in the market place rather than in the political realm. The market therefore is progressively becoming the mechanism of first choice for social and collective pressure.

Knowledge society and the changes in attitude to commercial messages.

Ask any current marketer or advertiser what the most contentious issue is at the moment and they will say SPAM. And a universal law is at play here. For every action there is a reaction. For every increased spam action, there is an ever-increasing anti-spam reaction.

Institutions such as the FTC, advertising and marketing regulatory bodies, as well as consumer bodies are responding to this email nemesis. Bodies such as the FTC’s Spam Forum are attempting to define spam and find ways of regulating commercial email practices. The challenge is vast, and whilst anti-spam technology exists as a countermeasure, the costs for this software, over and above the cost of spam-resultant unproductive man-hours to companies is escalating.

Studies have indicated that spam and related pop-up ads are eliciting a general antipathy to traditional forms of advertising. The more consumers are exposed to spam and pop-up ads, the angrier they are about all forms of advertising. They actively support ad-filtering technologies and show overall erosion of trust in advertising and advertisers. There is increasing annoyance expressed at telemarketing practices, and a growing number of individuals are expressing anti-spam-like perceptions and sentiments about television and radio adverts on their private weblogs.

Due to technology, large parts of marketing and specifically advertising practices have evolved into interpersonal, tailored messages. This de-massification of advertising messages results in an intensifying infringement on consumers’ privacy. It also makes regulation and monitoring by regulatory bodies almost impossible and therefore insufficient to offer consumer protection. Add to this the progressive outside-in control of recording, fast-forwarding and downloading actions by encrypting and controlling devices such as decoders,TV’s, DVD’s and PC’s. The development of the subcutaneous microchip carrying personal information about the individual may eventually be accessed by marketers to enhance their databases and personalised marketing messages. Society’s response to all this is a groundswell of new measures and attitudes to protect the consumer from these forms of implicit and explicit marketing and advertising control.

Referencing values such as quality of life, freedom of individual choice, empowerment and curiosity, consumers take charge of their destinies, their information and their personal space. The days of the consumer being seen as a passive recipient of information, and hence advertising, are passed. Active participation facilitated by technology already has resulted in shifts in marketing practices.

Permission marketing has emerged as a serious idea with the advent of the internet. However, permission marketing, and by extension one-to-one marketing and relationship marketing, are still marketer-initiated. The marketer-initiated model has inherent weaknesses, especially when facilitated by technology. Due to the low Internet costs to marketers, consumers receive ever-increasing volumes of permission based marketing messages. Drowning in permission mail, they do not have a sense of control over the terms of their permission-based relationships with marketers. The fact that many marketers also abuse the permission marketing concept in that they see it purely as a legal or contractual obligation, further strains the marketer-consumer relationship.

This marketer-initiated permission marketing is resulting in increased consumer cynicism. Add to this much unsolicited email marketing couched in initial obligatory permission requests, and we see diminishing consumer trust in companies.

A general anti-advertising and anti-marketing mindset, seeded by the anti-spam movement may very well lie on the near horizon for marketers. This will however predominantly be a developed world phenomenon. But it is in the developed world where the monetary value potential for marketers lies. Anti-marketing is one of the big fads in Japan these days. In line with the No Logo movement, anti-marketing expresses itself in a variety of ways. A clothing boutique in Japan has black painted walls, empty window displays and not a sign is to be seen. Any non-target would walk right past it, whilst ‘cool’ customers would be ‘in the know’ through magazines and especially through word-of-mouth. As a sub-text to the global anti-consumerism movement, anti-marketing over time could have a devastating effect on marketers and the affiliated industries, especially the media, advertising and marketing practitioners.

Annual advertising expenditures total billions of dollars and the bulk of these funds are used to subsidise the media. The media has become dependent upon the advertising revenues, especially the commercial radio and television channels. Advertising revenues worldwide constitute about two-thirds of the income of newspaper and magazine publishers. The demise of the media industry as a result of diminished revenue would be catastrophic. The world, and especially the developing world is dependent on the media as a primary source of information, knowledge and learning. Does this mean that the media will have to develop new business models?

Social trends are inadvertently pushing the marketing and advertising practices from a current push approach to a pull approach. The shift is from an inside-out (marketer–oriented) force to an outside-in (Society/consumer) force. In this age where marketing communication has turned into a feedback loop, the power has shifted to the consumer. The consumer’s increasing ability to access information when it is needed or wanted, rather than when the marketer/ advertiser makes it available to them, means that a new marketing model of ‘By Invitation Only’ is evolving. It is a consumer-initiated form of permission marketing, not the current marketer-initiated version.

How this scenario could evolve:

2003 Spam results in Anti-Advertising mindset

Consumers are increasingly using spam and pop-up ad filters to control the flow of unsolicited advertising to their computer screens. An increasing percentage is also pro technologies that filter out television commercials (PlanetFeedback survey amongst opinion leaders).

According to the PlanetFeedback study, the more spam and pop-up ads consumers encounter, the angrier they are about all forms of advertising – online banner ads, pop-under ads, event sponsorships, even radio and television advertising.

Study by a market and technology research firm, Ferris Research, estimates that spam costs US corporations about $8.9 billion in 2003, whilst European business would pay $2.5 billion to deal with the problem.

Whilst advertising organizations are preparing a spam policy, they are however circumventing the issue of pop-ups and other intrusive online ad formats. But the research they conducted shows that many consumers are even more annoyed by these ads than by unsolicited e-mails.

The number of weblogs denouncing advertising, especially TV advertising is on the increase. Consumers voice their frustration at not having a choice as to whether to watch an advert or not.

2004 Spam the global disease

Anti-spam company Brightmail filtered over 85 billion email messages for companies in January 2004. Of these email messages, 60% or 51 billion were spam.

Further Brightmail statistics show a 2% increase in spam messages each month, trending towards an 80% spam element of all email sent by the end of 2004.

Strong anti-marketing trend has been discovered in Japan by well-known trend watcher Loic Bizel. A Bathing Ape, a line of sweat shirts, baggy pants and T-shirts sporting a logo of a gorilla head has, without marketing or promotion, become one of the biggest fashion statements to surface from the Tokyo street scene.

2005 Closing the ‘Gates’ on spam

Microsoft announces the imminent death of spam at the World Economic Forum.

Consumers and the media however remain sceptical, arguing that the institutions that oppose spam, would not completely eradicate the threat since, by doing so, they would be eradicating the reason for their existence.

The Consumer’s Choice Council, actively involved in promoting practices such as ecolabeling, expands its influence to support consumers in their concerns and grievances about ever-increasing levels of permission-motivated contacts from marketers and advertisers.

2006 Developing World Opportunity

The planned increase in telephone lines within the developing world markets over the past five years has required some $200 billion investments. In the meantime, growth of cellular use in Africa has risen exponentially. Developed world corporations are now gearing up to further increase their presence in the developing world markets. Many, including the developing world governments, feel it is payback time. The collective investments for ICT development in these markets is seen as a reason to now turn up the volume on R and D, manufacturing and marketing activities, capitalising specifically on technological capabilities to reach and connect with many outlying and rural communities.

2008 ‘I’ve got you under my skin’

VeriChip ™ Corporation with their motto of "miniaturised, implantable identification technology with multiple medical, security, and emergency applications", has finally received FDA approval for their subcutaneous microchips. This means that the 50 volunteers, who have been waiting for this approval, will be receiving their chips in the next few weeks as part of an early testing phase.

A consortium of marketers has already approached VeriChip ™ Corporation in an attempt to gain access to these volunteers and to be part of the testing phase. Their proposition is to ‘explore the potential benefits to the consumer when marketers have access to individual microchips and the data. The benefit will be a reduction in mass marketing exposure and the provision of more personalised information and services to individuals’.

2010 From Permission to ‘By Invitation Only’

The signs of what may be called a ‘mass collaboration technology’ are evident. The marketing and advertising industry is currently fraught with an adversarial battle for consumer attention, but the consumer is winning the war. Many consumers carrying microchips also refuse to give marketers permission to access their information and to connect with them via their chips.

Technology has made it possible for people to remain in control of their own attention. And mass collaboration technology has made it possible for virtual communities of consumers, providers and intermediaries to emerge. The past five years have seen an unprecedented perfecting of information about goods and services, much as a result of consumer insistence and demand and resultant business compliance.

People these days check the web before doing anything else when they want to buy something or need a service. They tap into people ‘on the same team’, virtual communities that have bought the same products or services, or those who make a living aggregating information from previous buyers. No more opting-in to a targeted marketing campaign.

A slow turn of the tide towards an Invitational model of marketing is the very likely future, initially mainly in the developed world. Marketers and advertisers will have to make sure that they support the intermediaries and that they supply honest, factual, and relevant information. The consumer will do the rest. The consumer will decide whether to invite them into their lives or not.

This article was written for MindBullets in association with FutureWorld International - The Global Business and Technology Think Tank