The speaker begins by trying to make the point that a great product is more essential than its marketing and traditional advertising is not necessarily a need for new-age companies. Centrally the speaker presents his personal experience working on his startup and then launching a foreign company in India. He tries to make a point about how the Internet has revolutionized internet consumption.
Advertising is not dead and will not die shortly. As we’ve grown to be more informed to make decisions we’re now also doing so based on what’s marketed to us. Hence we’re not going to eliminate advertising but integrate it with new-age methods to gain the trust and attention of the consumer. Paid promotions are replacing billboards, digital marketing agencies are replacing traditional marketing firms, social media, and other companies are leveraging data and there’s this whole Industry around collecting and selling the data. Thus the lost efficiency problem of billboards or television ads is solved to a greater extent. In traditional advertising channels, all of the readers/viewers get served the same content through an ad agency while post-internet you can now consume all kinds of information from all over the world.
Data is way too important to be avoided. I work in a market research company dealing in the North American FMCG market and specifically work in a department catering to business intel based on supermarkets advertisements let me tell you the business has been booming the company along with its competitors and growing to solve the problem of effective advertisements using data. The relevancy of the ads shown to the consumer has increased thanks to data. This makes a strong point because relevant ads are a win-win for a consumer who’s willing to buy the product.
Another straight argument was that the product should be the best meaning companies should focus on getting the product perfect before putting it out on the market and while it’s true that a good product speaks for itself but the strategy isn’t feasible in the market. All of the companies mentioned as examples have iterated their products over time while putting them on the market.
The whole advertising industry is shifting from print-based and television media to social media to a greater extent as consumers of the latter have increased over the past 60 years. The way advertising used to target the choices of consumers have changed and become more powerful as well. A couple of examples used in the talk like Facebook, Snapchat, and Amazon have highly profiting advertising businesses. For example, Amazon generated $31.16 billion in advertising revenue from sellers on its platform, which was a 32% increase over 2020. according to the retailer’s fourth-quarter earnings statement. This makes them one of the most returning businesses. So there’s a conflict in using them as an example in the talk.
The new age is also content-driven. Companies hire employees, freelancers, or contract their content through agencies. The new-age consumer believes in the engagement that the companies provide in building and maintaining a brand. And this is a behavior that caters to the advertisement being an important element of a brand thus a company besides the Product because people identify with brands and those brands need to stay relevant with current market and consumer needs.
From Tesla’s example, there are other factors like the founder’s credibility in the market. Elon Musk has a good image in the media and popular culture for example his cameo roles in the film Iron man 2 and shows like The big bang theory, The Simpsons, and many more. He also has a strong track record as an entrepreneur. All of this coupled with his online presence create a strong effect on Tesla’s sales of course the revolutionary product speaks for itself the most.
So there are some additions and modifications we could do in the talk. Let’s start with the basic one, The title could’ve been more specific, something like “Traditional advertising is dead” or “Traditional advertising is not effective anymore” or “Marketing without Traditional advertisement”
Around 210 million households in India now own a TV set, an increase of 6.9% from 197 million in 2018, according to the latest estimates by TV monitoring agency BARC (Broadcast Audience Research Council) (source). While today we have 1.18 billion mobile connections, 700 million Internet users, and 600 million smartphones, which are increasing by 25 million per quarter (source). So we could use this data to strengthen our point of why traditional advertising is not the way to go for new-age companies. Emphasize how there’s no limit to the internet because we carry it with us and use it all the time thus the Internet is a better channel to advertise the product.
We could add a slide and 1-2 min of presentation on other ways CEOs are promoting their company, brand, and hence the product. with negligible monetary cost i.e. Self-branding used heavily by Elon Musk (72.8M Followers on his personal Twitter account vs. 12.9M on Tesla’s) thus himself being Tesla's main advertising force. Tesla has had a solid referral program that further motivates customers to share their great experiences with the company and its products.
We can add examples of how companies like Facebook worked on their product to excel in business i.e. previously, publishers integrated content and advertisements. Facebook modularized advertisements by allowing advertisers to target customers directly, not via proxy. Facebook integrated Newsfeed ad inventory and profile data, enabling it to sell highly effective advertising. We can add new-age advertising/marketing strategies like Giveaways. Giveaways work in a way where consumers themselves advertise the product on their own thereby increasing quality reach at a minimal cost.
Overall the speaker touched on an important topic relevant to the market and the presentation was fair to prove the point. With some more concrete facts and examples, an updated version of this talk could be an important one.
Here’s the talk I’ve critiqued:
