After a clone attack, the user strikes back

How is the market changing as a response to an increasing media attack. It is time for the user to strike back

The relationship between potential customers and sellers has always been a troubled marriage. While users require and want to be informed about a product or service, their appreciation and acceptance towards advertising has evolved over time.

In the early ages of advertisement, printed ads in newspapers had to draw the attention of potential consumers with creative drawings, pictures and headlines. The user, however, could always choose to skip the ads and read something else. The challenge for advertisers at the time was how to be more creative to capture the user attention as in general terms, the decision power was in the hands of the reader.

Since the idea behind “soap operas”, where detergent advertisers paid for free radio programming, users were happy to listen to scheduled ads during the broadcast of their favorite novel. The sponsors got their message sent and the potential customers were happy enjoying their free pastime.

When TV commercials started using the same sponsored free programming method, users started to complain about the continuous interruptions. With the advent of the remote control, they began fighting back by switching to another channel or simply “muting” the ad until their regular program resumed. This was the first tool available to consumers to fight against a perceived forced commercial ad, invading what they thought was their space.

Initially, what started as a subtle form of communicating a commercial message, turned out to be the beginning of a perceived attack against consumers. In several countries, government agencies began developing legal frameworks to “protect” consumers against deceptive advertising. And since then, a long war between companies, advertisers, consumers and government began…

Online Advertising

Initially, people used the Internet mainly for work purposes and during work time. Dealing with ads while using the Internet for work was essentially stopping to watch commercials during a work day. Of course, management was not happy about this productivity loss and implemented firewalls, ad blockers, and other methods including restrictions on “surfing time” for employees.

Online ads are generally perceived as a major problem because they distract employees from work, and prevent maintaining focus while researching, reading articles, etc. Online ads also significantly increase the loading time of many webpages, turning them into productivity killers.

Tools like ad blocking plugins, while effective, do not boost productivity or efficiency, as they simply remove the ads from pages before you see them. Ignoring an online ad does not reduce bandwidth and it doesn’t avoid unnecessary network clogging either.

Some people believed that blocking ads would eventually kill the Internet by cutting off vital revenue sources to content producers. In reality, it only means that companies and advertisers have to be more about connecting people who need products and services with those who offer them – not by distracting everyone with unwanted information. From a corporate responsibility standpoint, ads should never be imposed to the readers and the right to choose whether information is received or not goes beyond ethical issues and makes just plain business sense.

The old methods of e-mail marketing soon collided with the advent of spam and the immediate response from users and government.  Among others, institutions like the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in the US, established very clear and restrictive policies to protect consumers from unwanted publicity. While spam is far from being defeated, the user reaction and perception against unsolicited ads has only increased over time.

The European Union created the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive in 2005 and the United Kingdom has the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations. The US has a large set of laws and bylaws gathered around the guides issued by the FTC.

The Attack of the Clones

The ultimate goal for companies and marketers is to reach consumers through ads. New ways of doing this include legal grey areas and atypical tactics that are being used in a competitive and unforgiving environment. Some of the new methods go from guerrilla marketing campaigns, where unexpected and unconventional methods target consumers in unexpected places, to viral marketing techniques aimed to create a unique, engaging and thought-provoking concept to generate buzz.

Spam, Adware and Malware, and other illegal methods were also used by some companies despite the heftier sanctions imposed and the general negative reaction from users. Other forms like Stealth Marketing, and Astroturfing emerged as options for unethical companies as well, by the use of political, advertising, or PR campaigns designed to mask the sponsors of the message to give the appearance of coming from a disinterested, grassroots participant. These methods intend to give the statements the credibility of an independent entity by withholding information about the source’s financial connection.

The User Strikes Back

Even tough legally protected, users also fought back by using software tools like pop up blockers, Ad filters, Anti-spam software, and Proxies. Some companies tried to find a common ground by promoting Opt Out advertising, selecting customized ads based on predictions about the user interests generated from their visits to different websites, enabled through cookies.

While the main idea of online advertising is to support free content, products and services users can get online; profits, and not sales, are the primary measure of success. Emphasis is put on retaining existing customers rather than acquiring new ones. For this to work, the keyword is engagement from users, and this was impossible to achieve using forced one-way communication methods.

Social Media and User Generated Content

Users were not waiting for the government to protect them and started looking for alternatives by staying as far as possible from commercial information and leaning more on peer reviews and independent information sources about products and services. Several blogs maintained by users, not companies, soon attracted more traffic than the commercial brands. User Generated Content (UGC) was the ultimate trend as it represented transparency, ethics and a set of values completely opposed to the generalized commercial message.

Microblogging, specially based on the new tools provided to users with Facebook and Twitter, generated an unprecedented boom of content created, maintained and read by a large amount of users. This completely changed the rules of the game giving the control back to the user.

Only companies that understand the new market trends will be able to interact with users rather than communicate with them in a one-way street. Only when users have a vote and are able to say and express what they perceive from a brand, product or service, confidence and acceptance is generated.

Current marketing and advertising strategies look for ways to create buzz by using established social networks and other technologies to increase brand awareness or achieve other marketing objectives such as product sales.  The value of “word of mouth” is enhanced by the network effect, which can take the form of video clips, interactive games, advergames, e-books, brandable software, images, text messages, email messages, or web pages.

Going viral is a result of messages being passed-along by users, whether incentive-based or trendy-based. The ultimate goal of marketers has changed to create messages that appeal to individuals with high social networking potential (SNP) and that have a high probability of being presented and spread by these individuals and their competitors in their communications with others within a short period of time.

A New Hope

The war is not over, but today social networks may be considered a “neutral zone” where users and advertisers can co-exist in a more pacific manner. Instead of forcing a message, companies now actively recruit opinion leaders from these networks as their advocates. Ideally, these users will base their honest reviews on their experience and not by seeking other forms of compensation. This strategy will always have an advantage over traditional company-consumer messages.

The market has changed, hence the rules have changed. If companies don’t have the knowledge and expertise to fight on this new battleground, they can always use specialized social media managers, community managers and content generation agencies to help tem keep the message alive and, ultimately, gain the customer they want.

If you give the power back to the user by engaging them into your network, soon a satisfied customer will be willing to promote your brand, product or service above and beyond what was traditionally a result of spreading the message. Even unsatisfied users can find in this new form of interaction a forum to vent, and receive a state-of-the-art customer service that in the end will result in loyalty levels above any other form of marketing.