The consumer power shift and why content is your best answer
Consumers hate to be sold, but they still love to shop.
In the past, our audiences were passive recipients of our communications. They watched television and sat through the ads, they bought newspapers and saw the ads as largely an incidental activity… But a number of factors have resulted in a shift in power between marketers and their audiences, and these factors have not only given audiences the power to control the flow of information that they are exposed to, but have also increased their intolerance for commercial messages.
1. Infobesity.
Simply put, people are overwhelmed with the flow of information. Already by 2005, J. Walker Smith – president of consumer and marketing watcher Yankelovich – was telling USA Today that consumers were encountering from 3,500 to 5,000 marketing messages per day, vs. 500 to 2,000 in the 1970s.
There is no way anybody can process the flow of information we are exposed to, hence our filters are constantly up and operating.
2. Our pace of life is faster than ever.
A recent study undertaken in 32 countries by a team of scientists, led by British psychologist Professor Richard Wiseman, found that walking speeds have increased by an average of 10 per cent in the past 10 years.
“This simple measurement provides a significant insight into the physical and social health of a city. The pace of life in our major cities is now much quicker than before,” he said.
People simply don’t have time to sit and be sold to. We are driven by priorities, and the Internet has given us the ability live by those priorities while limiting distractions. One of the reasons Facebook is so popular is because Facebook gives us the power to associate with whom we want, when we want and for how long we want.
3. Technology is changing the way we think.
Calling it the ‘Age of the iBrain’, Scientific American reports, “the current explosion of digital technology not only is changing the way we live and communicate but also is rapidly and profoundly altering our brains”.
Ask most people when they last bothered to memorise a telephone number, and they won’t be able to tell you, because the need to memorise information is being made redundant by mobile technology.
A recent study, the B2B Content Marketing: 2012 Benchmarks, Budgets & Trends report (published by the Content Marketing Institute (CMI) and MarketingProfs) found that 41 per cent of people engage with a sales rep only after initial research, and 24 per cent only after they’ve shortlisted their preferred vendors.
- The brain’s plasticity – its ability to change in response to stimuli from the environment – is well known. What has been less appreciated is how the expanding use of technology is shaping neural processing.
- Young people are exposed to digital stimulation for several hours every day, and many older adults are not far behind.
- Even using a computer for Web searches for just an hour a day changes the way the brain processes information. A constant barrage of econtacts is both stimulating – sharpening certain cognitive skills – and draining, studies show. – Scientific American
Next page… Chapter 2, Part 2: Exposing the dangers of content clutter and bad content