Old Media
Photo by West McGowan
It’s no secret that social media has hit in a big way. The rise of social networking has completely changed how we view and why we use the internet. It has also changed the way we act towards advertising.
Traditionally marketing comes at odds with what the online experience is trying to promote, that being a social, collective, connected community. Offline marketing struggles with this as it is mainly a method of broadcasting an idea, a brand or a product. There is very little input from the customer besides reacting to the advertising.
This has changed up the rule book for creating a successful marketing campaign. Online marketing now has a great deal of freedom for how it tackles audience engagement. This is a positive and a negative point, as the number of ways to succeed has increased as well as the number of ways to flop dreadfully all over the internet.
There is security in offline marketing’s rigid structure and time-tested rules, but with more and more people spending more and more of their lives online, competition for heart and minds has never been fiercer.
The amount of advertising and marketing material a person might see in a day is a veritable barrage. Depending on how tech-savvy the individual is, they could have a smartphone, tablet, e-reader, PC and TV, all with internet connectivity, all ready to pump the latest promotional material into their consciousness.
This provides a great deal of competition for the humble magazine spread, telly ad or billboard. But it’s not all doom and gloom. After all, who says these two methods are competing against one another? Surely they are two methods for achieving the same goal?
Working with a combination of offline and online is the best way to success. Solid offline marketing can help bolster a fledgling online campaign, while online synthesis can breathe interaction and life into an offline effort that might be failing to engage.
The rise of an entirely new marketing channel has brought jobs to the market too. Whether you’re an experienced digital guru hoping to impart your wisdom, or a fresh-faced graduate looking for your first online marketing placement, the growth of online marketing is bringing fresh blood to the veins of an old enterprise.
When all’s said and done, until we are all assimilated into the great network cloud in the sky there will always be someone to look up at the side of a bus or pick up a flyer. Just so, there will likely be someone ready to click on a banner ad or ‘Like’ a Facebook page. Marketing all works towards the same goal, so it would be unwise to suggest that offline marketing is on the way out just yet.
But what do you think? Online or offline? Are the old ways archaic and begging to be superseded by digital? Or will tradition triumph over technology?
