The Interruption Game: Why Traditional Marketing Doesn’t Work Anymore?

“The best marketing doesn’t feel like marketing” – Tom Fishburne

Advertising is experiencing a period in which everything can be counted as an advertisement. This ‘everything’ not only contains newspapers, magazines, TV, radio, internet or outdoors, but unmitigatedly ‘everything’. Today, every available source could be utilized as an advertisement or as a channel for advertising. The market embodies a diverse range of products and services, yet customers are limited. Because these customers have correspondingly limited time and perception, the competition is more intense than ever. In daily life, while performing their routines, people encounter many stimuli, including brand names, logos, billboards, TV and radio ads, stickers and even the pop-up ads.?

By the time people reach the age of sixty-six, most of them see approximately two million television commercials. Time-wise, that’s the equivalent of watching eight hours of ads seven days a week for six years straight. In 1965 a typical consumer had a 34 percent recall of those ads. In 1990, that figure had fallen to 8 percent. (Lindstrom, 2008). As a result of this media assault, people are less and less able to recall what they have seen. Especially while performing particular tasks, people usually tend to switch off their perception to many stimuli since these are seen as irrelevant or distracting. Since the human brain’s capacity of absorbing and digesting the information is limited, supersaturation and high contrast of ads have resulted in a phenomenon called banner blindness. Essentially, most of the people have learned to ignore any banner-like information they encounter on the internet. In a sense, people look at countless ads during the day, but they rarely see one.?

In a single branch of a nationwide chain of grocery stores, more than 50,000 brands are competing for customer’s attention. Until now, advertisers were assuming that the way to make a brand remembered was to differentiate it from its competitors. However, the race is no longer between brands that produce products in similar segments, but between every brand that has ever been out in the market.?

A report from Kantar, a research, data and insight consultancy, has shown that consumers are suffering from ad fatigue. The research firm’s dimensions report showed that almost three quarters (73%) of UK consumers had seen the same ads 'over and over again'. As a result, just 11% said they 'enjoyed' advertising. (Watson, 2019)

Ironically, advertisers have tried to solve this problem by creating more advertisements. Over the last thirty years, marketers have considerably increased their ad expenses. Concurrently, ads became louder and more frequent. Thirty years ago, logos were smaller and commercial breaks were shorter. Today, most advertising agencies solely aim to catch the attention of their audience. Unfortunately, their ways of obtaining this attention are seldom relevant to the product or the brand. The aim of bringing the brand positive feedback, brand recognition or sales increase has disappeared. Mostly, ratings are being considered important, yet high viewing rates don’t necessarily mean that the ad has canalized the customer directly to the product.?

?“An ‘experience’ has much more impact than an ‘exposure’” says Brian Martin, Professor of Social Sciences at the University of Wollongong, Australia. Regarding the impacts of message involvement on the amount of comprehension, in 1988, Richard L. Ceisi and Jerry Olson have tested several hypotheses. Their results have revealed that higher message involvement increases the amount of the attention and cognitive effort during comprehension of advertisements. (Wang, 2006) Attention is the commodity that the brands are fighting for. Consumers are no longer buying products or things; they are buying experiences and stories. Successful brands are now selling connection and empathy via creating dynamic conversations with their consumers and the consumers’ voice is now overlapping with the brand voice.?

In 2016, M&M’S launched its “Vote for Your Favorite Peanut” campaign, where consumers decided future M&M’S colors and flavors. Flavor Vote campaigns have become an annual tradition for the brand ever since. Instead of making the decision for consumers, the brand is giving customers a chance to decide. This “direct, authentic and real dialogue” and appreciation for consumer opinion did wonders for the brand’s outreach and sales. The M&M’S drew in over 3.5 million votes and enhanced both sales and brand excitement. (Leong, 2016) When customers can shape the future of their favorite product, they engage with the brand. One year after the Flavor Vote campaign, M&M’S released its new caramel flavor by transforming Times Square into an arcade via augmented reality (AR). Customers who downloaded the AR app Blippar could scan billboards around the New York City and access vintage arcade games. Besides, the customers who couldn’t be present in Time Square could still participate by scanning the new caramel flavored candy bags. According to Bryan Icenhower, president of the experiential marketing agency IMG Live, experiential marketing is able to achieve in a moment what takes traditional advertising weeks, months or years to achieve. He says “Experiential is a uniquely fast and effective way to build brand awareness through one-to-one connections with consumers. It engages all five senses, sparking emotions that form lasting memories which have been shown to drive brand loyalty.”

The relationships between brands and their target audiences are being revolutionized. The new marketing era, the experiential marketing era, focuses on giving target audiences a fabulous brand-relevant customer experience that adds value to their lives, and ultimately makes the consumer remember the brand’s marketing – not because it shouted the loudest, but because it gave them an unforgettable experience. (Smilansky, 2009)?

Perhaps the number one example of experience is Disneyland. With over 100 million visitors, 12 parks worldwide and 16 billion dollars in revenue, they dominate the theme park industry. Disney has created a nostalgic and comfortable environment designed to charm the customer. The reason why people go to Disneyland is not to purchase Disney merchandise, but to experience a magical world. Nevertheless, experiences are not exclusively the area of the entertainment and hospitality industries. Located in their old brewery in Amsterdam, Heineken has set up a beer museum. Today, Heineken Experience is the 17th tourist attraction in Amsterdam with over 400.000 guests annually. Unlike conventional advertising, the Heineken Experience engaged the customer to the brand by creating an experience to promote an already existing product while also making profit on the experience itself. Later, the brand has made many campaigns linked to the Heineken Experience, including the creation of special bottles of the beer that were fitted with GPS and an accelerometer. These were placed on pedestals around Amsterdam bearing the words ‘Follow Me’. When the bottle was picked up, it vibrated, with the cap lighting up and swiveling around to direct people to the Heineken Experience Brewery. (Schultz, 2016) Although Heineken is selling a commodity such as beer, the brand has positioned itself as an exciting and high value company. In July 2016, they have launched Heineken City Shapers Festival and while situated mainly in Melbourne, customers in Sydney, Perth and Brisbane also experienced this festival by other small-scale events. The campaign formed a physical environment for customers to directly interact with the brand. Heineken not only increased the sales or market reach, but also reinforced brand loyalty. After engaging themselves with the brand, when people think of Heineken, they are not thinking about the product beer, rather they are thinking about the experience.

Every perception sets off a chain of related ideas in the neural network. Almost every physical object people encounter triggers a web of associations throughout the mind. Coca-Cola, for instance, bases its Santa Claus campaigns on the power of nostalgia. Thoughts of childhood happiness and wholesome family values appear in the customer’s mind as they choose between Coke or a generic brand of soda. (McRaney, 2011) The idea behind this technique called classical conditioning came from a study done by Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov. He showed dogs some food and rang a bell at the same time. After a while, the dogs would associate the bell with the food. They learned that when they heard the bell, they would get fed. Eventually just ringing the bell made the dogs salivate. (Andover, 2013) This is because the dogs were trained to associate the sound of the bell with food. They were trained to have the expectation of food. The same psychological principle works with humans. Brands try to evoke certain feelings, reactions or images associated with their product. If advertisements show certain images in conjunction with the product, the consumer will subconsciously relate the images to the product. Automobile brands frequently use this technique. Automobile advertisements rarely have anything to do with the actual car, but rather about someone driving the car. Luxury automobile brands show people in suits, going to a red-carpet event, while SUV advertisements show adventurous couples with kayaks and bikes in tow, driving on a dirt road. At this point, consumers are barely buying an automobile, but rather a lifestyle. They are buying the image of being someone that goes to black tie events or spends weekends being adventurous.?

Engaging the senses to sell products is referred to as sensory marketing; marketing that influences consumers’ perception of brands by using multi-sensory experiences to establish positive emotional connections with them. (Williams, 2018) Sensory marketing creates an experience between the customer and the product. It expands the way companies interact with customers.?

In 1971 Starbucks began serving one of the largest and most consumed commodities in today’s world, coffee. At first, Starbucks was a small coffee bean retailer in Seattle, specializing in unique blends from around the world. Robusta coffee beans were popular in the United States because of their cheap price, but Starbucks started to sell Arabica coffee beans which were higher in quality. During his travels to Italy, Howard Schultz, a young marketing executive, was impressed with the coffee bars. He had the vision of bringing the Italian coffee tradition to the United States. However, the founders of Starbucks rejected the idea. Schultz left Starbucks and created his own coffee brand, Il Giornale. Due to the gradual fall of the coffee sales, three founders of Starbucks sold the brand to Schultz. Schultz changed Il Giornale to Starbucks. After Howard Schultz became the CEO of Starbucks, the number of stores has rapidly increased. By 2002, more than 5,000 stores opened worldwide and the number of stores increased by more than 10,000 stores by 2005. They have evolved from simple coffee roasters to distinguished baristas and ensured a firm place within the food industry. Today, with more than 25,000 Starbucks locations in over 60 countries in the world, they are one of the largest corporate giants. Their products are being sold in grocery stores, bookstores and bakeries. Their popularity earned them recognition for being ethically conscious, gracious to their employees. However, the Starbucks experience is not about coffee. Starbuck is built around an idea of community. When customers walk into a Starbucks, they are surrounded by the inviting music and the smell of coffee beans. There is a significant difference between drinking Starbucks coffee at the store and at home. Research from another coffee provider, Nespresso shows that 60 percent of the sensory experience of drinking espresso comes from the retail environment. Nespresso, a subsidiary food giant Nestle, was faced with a dilemma created by this sensory experience peculiarity. They had created a home espresso making system that produced espresso which tasted just like the brew in the coffee shops. Unfortunately, consumers did not recognize that. (Dooley, 2011) This source bias shows Starbucks has created its environment to reach all the senses and this is particularly why they are successful today.

In South Korea, Dunkin’ Donuts implemented a creative sensory marketing campaign to raise awareness of Dunkin’ Donuts coffee. The brand wanted its potential South Korean customers to think of coffee every time they think of Dunkin’ Donuts. Devices that looked and operated like air fresheners were installed on buses in Seoul to draw customers to the stores. The spray, known as “Flavor Radio,” released a coffee aroma upon hearing the sound of the company’s advertisement when it played on the buses’ speakers. Dunkin' Donuts reports that visitors to coffee shops in Seoul increased by 16 percent and sales of Dunkin Donuts by bus stops in Seoul increased by 29 percent.

Advertisers who use conventional marketing strategies develop campaigns focused on the product. Product-oriented marketing represents a consumer that is easy to persuade, whereas today, the new consumer appears to be informed and less loyal to a single brand. As it assumes that the consumers make decisions rationally, conventional marketing focuses on product features and the benefits it gives to customers. But emotional marketing doesn’t start with the product. It starts with what the customers want to feel about themselves. Emotional marketing begins with a feeling, then the product features demonstrate that feeling.?

The science of sensory marketing suggests that consumers act according to their emotional impulses, more often than objective reasoning. Neuroscience professor Antonio Damasio believes emotions are more effective than reason when it comes to making a decision. Damasio studied people who had damage in the part of the brain where emotions are created. He found that they appeared normal, except that they couldn’t feel emotions. They all had something peculiar in common: they were not able to make decisions. They could describe what they should be doing in logical terms, yet they found it very difficult to make even simple decisions, such as what to eat. (Camp, 2012) Reason by its own does not allow people to make decisions. The logical part of the brain does not make decisions, it analyzes and captures information to weigh pros and cons. Although customers may always keep on comparing pros and cons, only an emotional push can help them choose.?

Customers are used to conventional marketing as it has been the primal strategy for years. There are conventional marketing strategies that are nearly as old as civilization itself.? Print marketing, for instance, has its roots in ancient times, when Egyptians made sales messages and advertisements on papyrus. However, techniques that bear closer resemblance to those that are in use today were created after the Industrial Revolution, which lasted from the mid-19th century to the early 20th century in the United States. With the Industrial Revolution, inventions such as the telephone, radio, and TV transformed people’s lives. In the late 1940s competition in the business world became intense. The need to increase sales by using advertising became an essential part of being competitive. First commercial broadcasts were aired on radio and later adapted to the next steps in the entertainment technology, TV, telephone and internet.?

Whether traditional marketing is still alive or not is a contentious question among advertisers. Supporters of traditional marketing say tried and tested techniques that have served businesses well for years should be used. Because people are familiar with traditional marketing, they do not need to exert extra mental effort to understand them. Especially for baby boomers and mature people who were born before the internet age, who also have better purchasing power than most young adults, this holds true. It is important to capture their attention and influence them to buy.

However today, advertising has shifted its aim from just selling a product to building brand awareness and brand loyalty. Conventional marketing may have evolved over the past few decades, but the fundamental aspects remain the same. The selling techniques it uses mostly rely on the infamous four P’s of marketing: product, price, place, and promotion. But today, the evolution of marketing requires more P’s. Putting the product in front of the target audience and being able to get the attention of the customer for a while does not necessarily mean that the brand has a relationship with the customer.

Traditional sales and marketing aim to increase market share, which means selling as much as much product as the company can to as many customers as possible. Experiential marketing, on the other hand, ensures that each individual customer who buys a particular product buys more of that product, buys only one brand, and is happy using that product instead of another to solve his/her problem.?

Advertising has moved from broadcasting, a one-way stream of information, to an interactive, two-way flow of information. Experiential marketing means not communicating to customers but communicating with customers. It gives companies the opportunity to directly engage with their customers, unlike traditional marketing techniques. Gaining real reactions and information from a possible smaller group of a target group rather than having a larger group who is only half engaged is more powerful. In an era where customers change the channel because of TV commercials or completely avoid any type of banner ad, experiential and sensual marketing eliminates this unwanted clutter by bringing life and excitement to the brands.?

Experiential marketing is giving the customers a reason to pay attention, while traditional marketers continue to interrupt them. Seldom they create entertainment. Traditional marketing’s goal is to use the “commercial break” to transmit a message into the customer’s subconscious. In the contemporary world, people are more selfish than ever. And they’re most selfish about their time and attention. Without a really good reason, brands are not likely to get a piece of their customer’s precious resource. Ignoring selfishness is perhaps the biggest trap traditional marketers fall into. Traditional marketing has the consumer at its mercy. (Godin, 1999) It is broadcast based, message-driven, didactic, constrained by publishing schedules and fixed once its published. Also, it is very calendar and budget bound. Traditional marketers can send ads as often as they can afford to and this enables the brands to generally stay in control. With experiential marketing, the control changes hands. Customers can refuse to receive the given message at any time.?

Knowing that the power to end their communication with their customer is in their customer’s hands, makes the marketers do a better job. Every message they create should be crafted with the goal of ensuring that it’s not the last one. Scheherazade knew how to use this technique. According to the Arabian Nights: One Thousand and One Nights she lived in an Arabian land ruled by Sultan Shahrayar. Every day, Shahrayar married another beautiful woman. He enjoyed their honeymoon and the next day had her beheaded. When it came Scheherazade’s turn, his vizier’s daughter, she had the natural insecurity of an experiential marketer, she knew that she might be refused, in this case, killed the next day. Her strategy was brilliant. That night, before she and the king went to bed, she told him a story. It was personal and relevant, and Shahrayar was excited to hear what happened next. In the middle of her story, Scheherazade decided that she was too tired to continue and promised to finish the story later. The next evening, she finished that story and then began to tell another.??

In the end, for 1,001 nights, each night Scheherazade finished a story and then told a new one, promising the ending tomorrow. After more than three years, Shahrayar had a change of heart and forgot all about beheading her, and Scheherazade had a customer for life.

References

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Camp, J. (2012, June 11). Decisions Are Largely Emotional, Not logical: The Neuroscience Behind Decision-Making. Retrieved from Big Think: https://bigthink.com/experts-corner/decisions-are-emotional-not-logical-the-neuroscience-behind-decision-making

Dooley, R. (2011). Brainfluence: 100 Ways to Persuade and Convince Consumers with Neuromarketing. Wiley.

Godin, S. (1999). Permission Marketing. Simon & Schuster.

Leong, B. (2016, November 14). How M&Ms Stays Relevant And Markets To Millennials. Retrieved from Referral Candy : https://www.referralcandy.com/blog/mms-marketing-strategy/

Lindstrom, M. (2008). Buyology. Doubleday.

McRaney, D. (2011). You Are Not So Smart: Why You Have Too Many Friends on Facebook, Why Your Memory Is Mostly Fiction, an d 46 Other Ways You're Deluding Yourself. Avery.

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Wang, A. (2006, December ). Advertising Engagement. Journal of Advertising Research , p. 358. Retrieved from https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.460.8977&rep=rep1&type=pdf

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