Marketing: Always Needed, Ever-Changing

Marketing as a whole has changed enormously throughout the past few decades, mostly because of the changing expectations of Generation X and Y and the invention of the Internet. Being part of this movement, both as a marketer and a customer, has made me realize my natural roots in traditional marketing because of my “baby boomer” parents, while it has also heavily influenced me through more interactive and customized marketing campaigns that target the newest generation. These integrated campaigns are intriguing and effective because they take us directly to a product or place that we already want to learn about or see, and do so in an entertaining way. In other words, they catch our attention in more ways than just a television commercial. Because consumer expectations have changed, marketers have had to use customer insights and well-executed segmentation plans in order to ensure the success of a product and the sustainability of a company. This segmentation can occur in many ways such as targeting certain demographics, social groups, personal interests groups and many more.
The three mediums of information that we were instructed to read before this blog,…(Wow, my computer still doesn’t recognize the word blog, talk about an “out of date” marketer!) were interesting to me. In regard to “MySpace Generation,” I feel that my generation as a whole was described pretty well, but that it was a very wide and possibly outdated generalization. I say this because I do not know very many people my age at all that have a MySpace account anymore. I add in the “anymore” because I think that many of used to have MySpace accounts until we came to college and signed up on Facebook.com. This seems to be the most popular social networking site among all my college friends. People that still have a MySpace keep it open strictly to use the music networking and band searches in order to find new bands. Also, I think college students are spending more than an average of 2 hours a month on these social networking cites, or maybe that’s just me!
The “Generation Y” article was my favorite because I think it is spot on in describing the customers of Generation Y (which I am not really counting myself in.) I say this because I was intrigued and influenced by the Michael Jordan and Mia Hamm Nike ads as a child; I loved those athletes! I had Michael Jordan Air Pumps and a Mia Hamm jersey, which I can’t believe I just admitted, at the age of ten. My point is that those ads were effective on me and many of us that fell right at the end of Generation X. Nowadays, I have two siblings who enlighten me on funny Youtube videos, who are heavily influenced by their friends, and who are striving to be different; clearly a product of Generation Y. I truly agree that they need to be marketed to in a very different way than ever before, but the answer of how is going to be different for each product and will be ever-changing. This is what I love about marketing.
I worked at an online marketing internship this summer in Los Angeles that focused mostly on viral, interactive online applications for marketing campaigns. We were continuously brainstorming goofy, off the wall, crazy ideas that we thought might create a buzz and an incentive for the teen generation to grab hold of. It is no longer blogs and forums that readers visit, its Youtube, Facebook, Myspace, and interactive, in-person marketing… if you ask me!