The Future of Marketing or Marketing of the Future?

I remember when I was a kid and my friends and I were talking about the (then) far and exciting year 2000. It seemed so exotic, so far, and so… extraterrestrial. So my friends and I concluded that by the year 2000 everyone was going to be wearing silver suits and driving flying cars! I would now blame the Jetsons for that vision.

Recently I have been revisited by a similar feeling as I see more and more articles or phone applications focused on augmented reality and geo-targeted marketing. As excited as I am about this new trend, I can’t help thinking whether it is a natural consequence of technological progress or more of the recent economy. Or a combination of both.

Marketing has changed a lot due to technology and to a certain extent this recession has really accelerated this change. For example, the reality that so many magazines – and among those my favorite one, Portfolio! – have been forced to close, has fueled the urgency to reinvent the publishing industry. The December issue of Esquire incorporated augmented reality in an effort to show that print media is not dead, it is just evolving. Is it relevant or is it just competing for the short-span attention of extremely busy readers? Given the magazine’s target audience, I would say it is relevant. And it is definitely an innovative way to make a statement. Esquire and Wired Magazine could pull it off; now, if it was Martha Steward or Redbook, I’m not so sure.

My feelings about geo-targeting are a bit contradictory. On the one hand it makes me think of 1984 and Big Brother. I can imagine it can be a bit spooky to get a message from Best Buy that says I should buy this model of TV versus the other one I was looking at last week or to check out the home entertainment system that goes with my newly-purchased TV. On the other hand, CRM (customer relationship management) has existed for a long time and companies would store the same amount of information, except that they used it to customize their offers on a larger scale. Geo-targeting takes it a step farther and targets individuals. In the end, it helps companies or brands customize their services or products and allows them to better utilize their marketing resources. As a marketing or brand manager, you have to strive to achieve both higher revenues as well as reduce expenses. And geo-targeting could be the answer. It remains to be seen, because it is no longer one-sided. You no longer have the company gathering the information and analyzing it. It is two-sided, because the consumer has to input or enable the access to some of the information that geo-targeting plans to use.