It’s Time to Face the Brave New World
To paraphrase Aldous Huxley, one of the 20th century’s most famous writers and futurists, it’s time to be brave and face the new world. Social media, consumer conversations, Web 2.0 digital interactivity are all upon us. The old way of looking at the world as a collection of markets and our customers as targets to hit with a message is fading into the sunset. The brave new world is a place of engagement, where information, content and the brand or product experience will lead the way. And the communications tools – channels, if you will – for reaching consumers and spreading the perfume of your brand’s experience are increasingly offering a digitally interactive conversation, and it’s the customer who’s in charge.
“But that’s not my customer,” you say? “My customer is 75 and older and they’re not, as a rule, digitally sophisticated.”
Perhaps not. But their children are. For example, the 55+ age group has grown their presence on Facebook by more than 500% in the last six months! Those users have grown from less than one million in January 2009 to more than 5.8 million by July 4. It’s their children who are driving them to embrace the new media, and smartphones and netbook computers are making it all so easy to do. Safe to say that part of our world that hasn’t changed is about to.
Plus, for these adult children, this new media world is fun. It’s informative. It allows them to connect with people they thought they’d never meet, let alone Tweet with. It makes the world smaller and the opportunity to engage with them larger. Click here for a little more insight into how subtle, seductive and powerful it can be.
So, how important are your customers’ kids to your customers’ decision-making process? What do these adult children know about you? What do they think of you? How have you engaged them in the experience you say you offer? Don’t get me wrong – traditional forms and venues and outlets for traditional advertising approaches aren’t going away anytime soon. But the digital landscape and the new power of the consumer in terms of how marketing messages are encountered is steaming rapidly in our direction. If we ignore it, we’re likely to find out it’s not the light at the end of the tunnel we see, but the light on the front of the freight train coming toward us.
All of which means this is without question the brightest opportunity to explore, experiment and develop new ways to connect with your customer to come along since the introduction of television. Time to be brave and embrace the new world. Opportunities like this just don’t come along very often.
Good post and link. Exciting times!