Modern Marketing Calls For a Relationship Before the “Sell” and the Sale

If a brand can’t relate to its customers, those customers will find a brand that will.

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

We all remember those ads of yesteryear where the push was real.

“You need this!”

“Buy this!”

“Get your mom to take you to Toys ‘R Us RIGHT NOW!”

Case in point Oatmeal Swirlers from the 80s/90’s. In this ad, the kid is “teaching” his mom what a “nutritious” breakfast is made of.

General Mills wanted to compete with Quaker Oats. So they added a tube of high fructose corn syrup to their oatmeal cereal. They marketed it as “cool and nutritious”.

No one was buying that, right? Actually, they were.

I was one of them. My mom bought this for me and my brother once or twice… it was disgusting.

Mainstream radio and broadcast television offered us limited choices. We bought as we…