Blog Post 2: What will marketing be like ten years from now?

       Marketing has always sought to catch the attention of consumers in order to sell products and services. However, I think I'm going to be entering the field at a particularly interesting time. With the advent of social media, our lives have gone from shared exclusively with small, intimate, parties to posted for all to see; and marketers sure haven't neglected to notice this trend. Colossal companies from Coca-Cola, all the way down to local businesses such as City Market, have made sure to keep up with the times and turn to social media in an effort to reach today's consumers. However, as years pass, I believe that not only will companies be on our social media pages, but personally interacting with us online in an effort to gain our favor, and business.

http://technmarketing.com/blog3/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/social_media.jpg

          As Generation Y and the Millennials, two generations born and raised with fast-improving technology, begin to enter the workforce companies will need to adapt and aim marketing campaigns to screen-entranced buyers. To reach modern audiences, marketers are seeking the help of psychologists and looking into the very minds of their customers. The results of such tests aid in creating captivating ads which resolve or create need for the company's products or services.

https://whywereason.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/martin-lindstrom-buyology.jpg

        Martin Lindstrom is a prominent marketer who uses such partnerships with psychologists to conduct psychological research in light of marketing . In his book, Buy-ology, he writes of true consumer reactions to advertisements, and how best to use advertising to appeal to consumers. An interesting discovery he made was the role of  the senses, on our consumer behavior.  According to Lindstrom, in the future marketers won't just use images to grab our attention, but will use scents as well as sounds to appeal to consumers. "...our visual sense is far from our most powerful [sense] in seducing our interest and getting us to buy." Lindstrom found that visual images are far more effective when paired with another sense like scent or sound. As Lindstrom predicts, a future walk down Times Square might not feature as many towering billboards, but rather, "...sidewalk[s] awash with smells and sounds. A whiff of lemon from a store selling a new... must-have sneaker..."

       Martin Lindstrom is certainly not alone. I recently viewed a TED Talk, "What Will The Future Without Secrets Look Like" by Alessandro Acquitsti. The TED Talk discussed social media, and how by sharing more and more personal information online consumers are unknowingly aiding in future relationship marketing techniques used by marketers. 
       In an attempt to appeal to shoppers, companies will use social media such as FaceBook to aid in creating more personalized ads. Alessandro Acquitsti claims that soon companies will be able to use an algorithm which will identify a person's two closest friends, with this information, in real time, the images of the friends will be blended into a composite. Although the consumer won't recognize their friends in the composite, it is psychologically proven that the combined images of their friends will subconsciously appeal to them. Companies will use this new person as an image in their ad campaigns (for that individual), making that customer more likely to purchase the product (this is about eight minutes into the video below).  Although Acquitsti is concerned about the potential  impact on the of freedom and privacy of consumers, I find this to be a fascinating development in personal selling. It plays on the trust consumers put in their reference groups (friends/family) when making purchasing decisions. However, in this new form of advertising, the consumer won't even realize that it is the image of their friends causing them to have positive feelings towards the product. They will be mentally satisfying the process of consulting their reference group about a product, without ever speaking to their close friends/family about the product or the decision of whether or not to purchase it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_pqhMO3ZSY

         It seems the futuristic marketing techniques depicted in films such as, Minority Report (see video clip below), truly aren't that far off from the near future of marketing. Through appeals to senses such as smell and sound, and a more personalized approach to advertising via company social media accounts and composites of online friend's images, marketing is becoming more and more appealing to the individual in a technological, and decreasingly private world.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITjsb22-EwQ