Technology Makes the Marketing Go Round
Written by Kimberly MacArthur Graham on June 25, 2014
Who says that social media isn’t educational? Thanks to Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, and their ilk, we’ve all learned important things really, really fast.
For example, during the 2013 Super Bowl blackout, we learned that you can still dunk (Oreos) in the dark. Last week, when Uruguay’s Luis Suarez bit Italy’s Giorgio Chiellini at the end of a World Cup game, we were presented with multiple savory tidbits, including my personal favorite, “Snickers is more satisfying than Italian.” As someone not particularly interested in spectator sports, I can honestly say that I only watch for the social media.
In addition to clever minds and agile writers, these posts owe a great debt to technology and the way it has changed the way that we process information. With smart phone or tablet in hand practically 24 hours a day, we can access and share information constantly. The obvious downside is that too many of us share too much, too often. But even when the content is news-worthy, we have to personalize it and share it, hoping that people will “like” it. And as consumers, we now expect that someone, somewhere (typically a brand) will react to it quickly and cleverly. And the producers now expect that someone, somewhere (hopefully a consumer!) will share their content quickly and cleverly.
A client remarked to me yesterday that it must be fun to be in marketing these days, with technology constantly changing the way that we work. Absolutely he is right: it is a fascinating time to be a marketer, using new tools to achieve classic goals of communicating, informing, and persuading. As technology reinvents itself ever faster, so does marketing. Because of my profession, I’m hyper-aware that technology is not merely altering itself; it is changing the expectations of us as marketers. Clients expect us to keep up with the latest technology and trends while quickly reacting to popular events to produce creative content. And this challenge is precisely the type of sport that interests me.