Social Media and Modern Advertising

Q1. Limited Budget

I think so-called good old-fashioned advertising is indeed a thing of the past. First, the online marketplace is far more crowded than it was previously, not only with offered goods and services but also with messages about various products. To get seen and heard requires more than a catchy jingle or slogan. It requires building a relationship with consumers. A good example of this are companies which have engaged consumers over Twitter, creating edgy and snarky voices for respected brands like Wendys and MoonPie.

But even a marketer with a limited budget can thrive in the online marketplace of ideas by forging a respected brand image and cultivating influencers on Instagram and TikTok to create buzz about the product. In fact, many of these seemingly more organic forms of marketing generate greater trust in the much-coveted younger consumer demographic, because they do not seem like obvious forms of advertising, but appear sincerely generated out of interest.

As noted in Chapter 19, personal selling can be a powerful tool. Being promoted by individuals who do not seem to have an apparently self-interested connection with the brand can be an important part of generating such trust. Although awareness and knowledge, as also noted in the textbook, are very important to generate interest, so is the idea of liking a brand. Liking the consumer who uses the brand can likewise generate interest.

The segmentation permitted by Facebook, Google Ad Words, and other techniques to enhance targeted advertising can enable small companies selling unique goods to specific target demographics to reach those consumers more effectively, perhaps just as effectively as larger brands deploying more traditional forms of advertising. Online advertising can also be relatively low in cost, compared with print and television advertising, and can offer brands an instantaneous feedback loop about what ads are high-performing and which ads are low-performing.

Q2....

Love/Hate

Advertising can annoy viewers, because it is a propaganda tool explicitly created to prey upon our weaker impulsesfear, desire, shame, a craving for social status. It can be like a nagging voice, telling us what to do, that all the convictions we have about our lack of self-worth are accurate (we are too fat, have zits, need a new car, need a new phone, and so forth). Advertising tries to be memorable to stimulate a purchase, rather than to be art. It is designed so consumers will think about the product immediately when the consumer is in the store or clicking a link. Even if the ROLAIDS advertisement was irritating, generations of people thought of the slogan when making the impulse purchase of an antacid made it an effective advertisement.

Advertising can also craft an image for products that do not have to do with those products essential attributes but rather with the image the target consumer wishes to attain. For example, alcoholic products and fast foods are a good example of this, because the mass-produced tastes of beer and vodka and different burgers are not particularly different between brands. But advertising can ensure certain images are associated with those products and thus be very compelling. This was the case with Absolut Vodka, but also Budweiser versus Miller beers, as well as McDonalds Big Mac versus Burger Kings Whopper.

When there are powerful associations given to products because of advertising, people may become nostalgic and even fond of the ads, as they are of the Budweiser Clydesdales. When products become part of consumers lives and identities, so do the ads that helped forge those identities.

Even when the advertisements are memorable, and do not irritate, however, there is a limit to which advertising can convince people to purchase products they do not want. New Coke is a good example of this. Coca-Cola had built so much of its brand identity upon consistency. An advertising campaign could not convince people to change their deeply held conviction in the quality of the original product. But that was many years ago, and the marketplace was less crowded. People are consuming less soda, for example, because…