Old School Is New School: Reconceiving a Standard Advertising Measure for the Connected Consumer

Visionary insights are timeless, but when they’re more than a hundred years old, it can be easy to dismiss them as outdated. As denizens of a digital world armed with advanced marketing strategies, we can mistakenly think of the century-old AIDA model as a quaint artifact of an age that bears no relevance to our own.

Unpacking AIDA

First articulated in 1898 by the advertising pioneer E. St. Elmo Lewis, AIDA is an acronym for the dynamics that drive all human pursuits and life processes, as well as a simplified road map of points along a purchase journey, or phases of what can also be thought of as a brand-consumer “courtship”:

• Attention — The “raw currency” of all human experience that marketers must successfully recruit.
• Interest - The active mobilization and focalization of attention that marketers must successfully capture.
• Desire - The intensification and “satisfaction-seeking” of interest that marketers must successfully “court.” 
• Action - The resolution and satisfaction of desire that marketers must successfully see through to “commitment.” 

The genius of the AIDA model is that it is broad enough to illuminate almost any subject of human inquiry, and for marketing purposes, it offers a framework for understanding, coordinating, and capitalizing on different phases of a purchase journey or brand-consumer courtship. By being attuned to these different phases, marketers can adjust their strategies to maximize and seize the opportunities inherent to each. In this way, marketers fulfill the role of trusted guides and match-makers, facilitating mutually beneficial relationships between consumers and brands.

But because the AIDA model is as much a meta-view of human nature as it is a point of reference for understanding consumer behavior, it continues to hold value for the digital age. When reconceived for today’s connected consumers, the visionary insights of the AIDA model not only stand the test of time but help us clarify and refine our role as marketers in the brand-consumer relationship.

Reconceiving AIDA

Though the principles of AIDA are timeless, they were first conceived in a simpler setting when consumer behavior was more predictably linear. If nothing else, the digital age is characterized by non-linearity, and to leverage the visionary insights of the AIDA model, it must be reconceived in terms of a complex-systems perspective. What this means in practice is that we need to look at the phases and places articulated by the AIDA model as:

• Dynamic
• Ambiguous
• Interconnected
• Mutually influencing
• Potentially erratic
• Capable of occurring simultaneously

For example, a connected consumer might find themselves tagged in a social media post linked to a brand that a friend has liked and simultaneously find their attention recruited and their interest captured. Likewise, a connected consumer might land on a website that is so personally compelling to them that the distance between the courting of their desire and the commitment of their purchase action may be mere seconds.

In good postmodern fashion, today’s connected consumer might even bypass significant portions of the desire/courtship phase of the purchase journey and go straight to the action/commitment phase. In fact, this is the paradox that titans like Amazon are banking on with offerings like Prime Wardrobe that further turn the linear purchase cycle on its head.

Marketers with the creativity and sophistication to reconceive AIDA in non-linear terms (as Amazon has done) stand to innovate the brand-consumer relationship and deploy strategies that not only leverage existing markets but actually create new ones.

Putting AIDA to work for the connected consumer

How would AIDA look on the ground? Here are some touchpoints for reconceiving AIDA for the connected consumer:

Attention

Attention can be recruited through any channel, digital or otherwise, and it’s not necessarily a good thing if you’re reaching the wrong people or dealing with the viral effects of a brand mea culpa. Optimize your audience by tracking reach and engagement and continually calibrate content for maximum attentional recruitment.

Interest

Connected consumers’ interest rests increasingly on the perception of brand authenticity, which in turn rests on a two-way relationship of trust between the brand and the consumer. Though today’s connected consumers resent being “pitched” and tend to respond by quickly changing channels, their interest is meaningfully captured by compelling stories. Marketers who capture interest through authentically told stories rather than through sales pitches will earn the trust that is perhaps the most valuable currency of the digital age.   

Desire

Brands sell experiences, not products or services. However, the desire for particular experiences is intimately tied to personal values and the promise of their fulfillment. Critically, value in the digital age can no longer be adequately understood in the narrow and reductive terms of ROI. Marketers must adopt more complex, nuanced metrics for measuring value as well as new mindsets capable of redefining value altogether and courting the consumer accordingly.

Action

The digital landscape in which connected consumers find themselves is one of dizzying choice and intrinsic uncertainty. This has introduced levels of commitment anxiety into the purchase journey that were unknown even a decade ago. Marketers who can recognize and respond to opportunities for mitigating or eliminating this anxiety will inspire an enduring commitment to the brands that restore the connected consumer’s confidence in the purchase journey and brand-consumer relationship. 

To dismiss the AIDA model as inherently outdated is a sign that one’s mindset can stand to be updated. Far from being a quaint artifact of a bygone era, AIDA holds visionary insight for those with the creativity and sophistication to strategically reconceive it for the age of the connected consumer.  

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Shama Hyder is CEO of Zen Media, a leading marketing and new media consultancy, a best-selling author, and an internationally renowned keynote speaker.

As seen previously on Forbes.