How the new reveals its age

The universe appears to be shrinking. Astronomers and physicists are sure to disagree, but they aren’t in Marketing, and I am. And the view through my telescope shows more and more of less and less.
There’s more content — a seemingly infinite quantity — but it’s either a rehash of something already well known or it’s a revelation of insights that were conventional wisdom generations ago. It’s just new to the writer of contemporary content — someone who has never cared much for research.
For many a pundit, it’s vital that research is a vanishing practice. That allows them to peddle old wine in the proverbial new bottles of personalization, segmentation, USPs (and other forms of differentiation), and viral distribution. But, bluntly, it’s recycled information that’s repackaged for a new group of people who lack the curiosity to consider what happened before they were born.
Neology
Take content marketing, for instance. The content component isn’t new; B2B companies, for decades, have churned out information that’s aimed at particular people in the buying cycle. It’s the distribution model that’s different.
Now, instead of a Sales organization determining who gets what and when, the buyers access it online and compare it to materials they get from competitors. This is one area where research, in its most basic form, still survives, though it’s focused exclusively on the present.
Personalization may now be digital, but it isn’t something new. My grandparents (and theirs) could rely on local vendors to
alert them when products they liked were in stock. If my grandmother had a passion for kumquats, the grocer would call her to let her know that he had some in stock or he’d see her passing by on the street and would rush out to tell her. Vendors knew their customers and catered to their needs. Nothing is more personal than that.
Same as before
Direct marketers (and their tools) have evolved, but the underlying principles they use are the same: you send Offer A to List 1 and Offer B to List 2 because 2 can’t use A and 1 doesn’t care about B. It’s simple logic. And that rationale has been used since long before a database was turned into zeroes and ones.
And then there’s the purple cow of differentiation. Consider the Corvette. It was unlike any car that Chevrolet had produced (and still is). To this day, it remains the only consistently identifiable American sports car.
The Thunderbird was Ford’s response, but that manufacturer’s marketers completely lost sight of their product’s
positioning. As the T-Bird became another boat in the company’s fleet, Ford recovered with the Mustang… and stuck with its initial and distinguishing character.
If somebody wants a Mustang (based on a preference for the brand’s design) that competes with a Corvette’s performance, they can configure the car as a Cobra (and bow down to Carroll Shelby… though he first created the Cobra in the body of a British A.C. Ace, but you have to do your research to know that). Chevy responded to the Mustang with the Firebird and Camaro but didn’t know quite what to do when they were thought of as poor men’s Corvettes.
Say it again
As for viral “stuff,” it’s word-of-mouth gone digital. Hula Hoops were popularized by WOM. So was The Who’s first
equipment-smashing U.S. appearance at a Murray the K rock ’n’ roll show in New York. Even Pop Rocks in the ’70s were a word-of-mouth phenomenon. Literally.
I won’t stop signing up for webinars or downloading articles that claim to be the latest and greatest. I’m a devotee of life-long learning. Yet I’m sure that, as with 98% of them, my reaction will be eye-rolling bewilderment.
Just because something’s new to someone new doesn’t mean that it’s new. It didn’t spring, full-grown, from the head of Zeus. And if the purveyors would pause to do their research, they might discover a way of presenting information that explains how we got here. And that would, by contrast, be refreshingly new.
