In a previous post, I talked about learning from live communication to identify what people will pay for.
In Business Week, Jon Fine talks about "Marketing's Drift Away from Media" towards "Below the Line" marketing tools, such as live, experiential marketing.
We comment on the possibility that since live is powerful for marketing as well as media, there are synergies here:
"If you've got a live one, sink the hook." (a quote by Bob Thacker, senior vice-president for advertising and marketing at OfficeMax in the article) Live communication is the
gold standard. Everything else is trade-off. One of the advertising
giants said (paraphrasing) that door-to-door sales is the most
effective medium, anything else is inherently less effective but cost
effective because it reaches more people. Somehow we seem to have
forgotten that it is not all about how many eyeballs you reach.
As the media industry becomes smarter about marketing to sell their own
product (re:Murdoch's shift to paid online), they will also discover
more powerful ways to integrate online and live interaction with
consumers.
Ironically, by focusing on selling media to consumers, media will
develop new products for marketers as well.
