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We all grew up watching advertisements of different scales and statures. Creative and promotional strategies which where earlier built on sheer talent,  later turned out to be based on scientific patterns. One had to study and learn about customer behavior, interest, marketing philosophies before getting qualified enough to design and execute marketing plans for brands and businesses. Any marketing or business executive’s curriculum contains case studies which form a crucial part of their learning material. These case studies were built on the media landscape which prevailed at that time, which was mostly print, TV, billboards etc.

Then came the web. Advertisers jumped onto web to capitalize the new platform, where they could probably target the users and stream advertisements and even measure their level of engagement on their advertisement. There was a great level of excitement and the age old way of advertising still applied good even with the introduction of web. Till here, the promotion and communication was happening one way. What we call as a dictating or instructional style of marketing.

How ever the game changed when Web 2.0 came in. Web 2.0, in simple words, is an interactive web. People can upload content and the exchange became two way rather than just one way. Engagement and interactive communication was born. With this came the demise of horizontal portals and content aggregators, as content was freely flowing across the web, making almost any passive content obsolete. Today, every internet user has the power to create content which makes every body a publisher and producer. People have started exchanging and interacting with each other in lightning speed. Communication had changed once and for all to an altogether different game. Traditional media planners and creative agencies who often function at high costs and churn out campaigns at exorbitant costs are still trying to figure out why their campaigns are not working the way they used to.

So, here are some thoughts that merit a much more extensive discussion.

How exactly has the media and communication industry changed?

What do you need to do to keep pace or catch up?

We will discuss this in our coming posts.