The TED Effect On Marketing

Marketing in 2023 has already proven to have its twists and turns as budgets attempt to survive intact in the face of the impending economic downturn, the myriad of return to office policies continue to confuse commutation, and consumption patterns and cookies may actually finally go away, maybe.?

With all that uncertainty, The TED Effect will continue play a part in how we craft and execute our marketing plans. Or at least, it should.

The TED Effect is an acronym for Time, Experience, and Disruption; three crucial elements in challenging the way we think about marketing in 2023.

TIME

We’ve all seen the infographic that shows what a minute on the internet looks like; 695k Instagram stories are shared every minute, 500 hours of content uploaded to YouTube every sixty seconds, and $1.6m USD spent shopping online.

Downloads and uploads, posts and searches, streams and shares…oh my.

There is no more time in a day today than there was 10 years ago, but the volume of those things that fight for our attention has increased so dramatically that the average adult’s attention span is now 8 seconds.

8 seconds.

Which means most readers never made it far enough to realize that TED was an acronym, let alone got all the way here.

In marketing today, we are not competing against what we deem as our traditional competition (for me it’s other forms of entertainment: streaming, gaming, MVPDs).

We’re competing against Time for the attention of our consumers. If time and attention are our competitors, how do we win?

EXPERIENCE

I’m not talking about years of service, awards won or most trusted… I’m talking about the Experience the consumer is having.

The emotions felt, a frictionless process, a customer experience so good it’s sharable. The OMG experience. In marketing we must achieve this.

What Experience can I offer you in exchange for your time? In order to stop your thumb scroll, hold your eyes long enough to read my copy, invite to try my product, to sample, to like, to share.

The importance of the experience in our attention deficit world has never been greater. The right Experience creates an emotional bond between the brand and consumer that can last a lifetime. The wrong Experience can result in everything from an item abandoned in an on-line shopping cart to a customer lost forever.

Not only are we competing with Time for the attention of the consumer, but we are also competing against the consumer’s last best Experience.

Everything we do in marketing is about creating the right, contextually relevant, emotional experience.

I call it “Making it MEGA.”

Memorable

Emotional

Generate

Action

That last part is crucial! We must Generate Action!

Creative without a “sell” or call to action, is art. Powerful creative that sells, combined with an incredible experience, that’s marketing. Which leads us to…

DISTRUPTION

Not only is Disruption inevitable, but it’s also an opportunity.

Alvin Toffler famously said:

“The illiterate of the 20th century will not be those who cannot read or write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn.”

At its core, that’s what disruption does, it forces us to unlearn and relearn. It is imperative that we roll-with, learn and benefit from disruption. But I site the Toffler quote because he said it in 1970! Disruption is nothing new and we must create cultures that not only accept disruption but encourage it.

So how do we encourage that level of entrepreneurial spirit? How can we begin to think and act like disruptors?

First, don’t fear failure. We can insert quotes about how many times Edison “didn’t fail,” he found 10,000 ways that didn’t work, or the number of shots Michael Jordan missed, or any of the other motivational quips about failure.

Second, spend time with a new crew. You probably won’t get any truly novel inspiration inside the same circle of influence you move in daily. Ask someone outside of your industry what frustrates them the most about your products and services. Engage the stranger on the plane sitting next to you, the bartender, whomever. Everyone is a consumer. We tend to fall in love with what we do, when we need to be focused on the people we do it for.

Another fun process is to use “Yes, and…” to keep the conversation going and hopefully make it more and more absurd. This is the tool that improvisers use on stage to start a scene and keep it going until they find the funny. You can use it to keep a conversation going until you find a new approach to a problem.

Finally, remember in marketing Trends are Your Friends. Paying attention to trends will not only keep you relevant but often allow you to spot opportunity early. A few of my favorite places are Pinterest Predicts, Cassandra and TrendSpotter. Of course, many of these companies offer paid services but they have enough content outside of the paywall to get you thinking.

Pay attention to what’s trending and you’ll see how people are spending their Time, the Experiences they are consuming, and possibly the next Disruption coming your way.

#management #marketing #innovation #entrepreneurship #creativity #leadership