2012 Marketing Forecast: More Crowdsourcing

December 29, 2011 By IdeaConnection
Image credit: Autowitch

Have traditional television adverts had their day? Seethu Seetharaman, professor of marketing at Washington University in St. Louis predicts that 30 second television commercials and full page magazine ads will wane as more use is made of crowdsourcing, Internet viral campaigns and product placement.

In a story by his university’s newsroom he says, “Traditional expensive advertising is no longer effective given all the clutter, as well as the emergence of technologies, like digital video recorders, that block the ads from even being viewed, much less absorbed, by consumers.”

Crowdsourcing and viral campaigns are low-cost ways of building effective marketing strategies that can forge deeper relationships with consumers especially if they are given some kind of participatory role.

For example, crowdsourced competitions such as Ben and Jerry’s “Do the World a Flavor” and Lego Mindstorms where consumers create Lego designs not only provide companies with new products, but they are cheap  forms of advertising as their stories are picked up by the media and consumers talk about them on social media sites.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7GIbfOpLpg
“I think crowdsourcing is only going to increase,” adds Seetharaman.

It may be a little too premature to consign traditional advertising methods to the dustbin of history, but Seetharaman’s comments make interesting reading as more companies eschew expensive ad campaigns for low-cost and stickier ways of getting their messages out there.


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