The End of (Marketing) History

In 1989 Francis Fukyama released the article ”The End of History?”. Fukuyama argued that the sociocultural evolution of mankind had reached its end. Western liberal democracy had won, defeating all other forms of social, political and cultural systems. In short – democracy and capitalism ruled.

In 1999 Seth Godin released the book ”Permission Marketing” and in the same time coined the same phrase. Godin argued that this was the end of marketing as we knew it (i.e. in-your-face-advertising without you asking for it). Godin visioned a future marketing with customers taking the initiative and the relationship between buyer and seller was based on a permission from the customer to allow the seller to invoke (and uphold) a dialouge. Compare this to how TV ads work with throwing messages in your face and you realize that this was a shift in the view of how marketing should be done.

This is 2009, ten years later. Fukyama was proven wrong rather immidiately, 1989 wasn’t the end of history. Seth Godin, on the other hand, got it more right. There has been a shift in how marketing should be done, although it took some time and we had to get past Web 2.0 before we could arrive there. Not only is it a shift, it is a MAJOR shift. However, let’s step back a couple of decades to 1962. Thomas Kuhn released the book ”The Structure of Scientific Revolutions”. With this book he coined the phrase ”paradigm shift”. He described a paradigm as ”[..] what members of a scientific community, and they alone, share”. He presented a theory on how the shift in paradigms occurred through complex social processes. This puts us back in 2009. What we see in the online marketing sphere now is a paradigm shift – a fundamental replacement of how the ideas of how marketing should be done online.

A new phrase has been introduced by some: ”The End of the Destination Web”. What this means is that it doesn’t work anymore to simply release a website/microsite and get a massive customer base. A web sites cannot be an island any more – you must think larger and in terms of communication. To paraphrase and old movie: ”If you build it, they will not come”.

This is backed up by stats: in March 2009 the average american visited only 111 domains and 2.500 web pages according to Nielsen Online. The attention rate on this pages is also fragmented: the average time spent per page is only 56 seconds. Portals and search engines dominates with getting 12 of the 75 hours spent online in March. ”Social media”-sites like Wikipedia, Facebook and YouTube aren’t far behind, getting nearly 4.5 hours of the monthly attention. Combine this with studies showing that we are more likely to take action when reading online articles including brand information (51%) compared to search engine advertising (39%) and banner ads (25%).

What does all this mean? It means that when you design, implement and communicate your web site, think bigger. Your web site is not your brand, your brand is what people are saying about you. And this discussion will not take place on your web site, it will take place on arenas not in your control. To increase sales, to build your brand and to be successful in online marketing you need to be aware of this. The age of getting big sales using banners is gone, it is time to ride the next wave. This time, however, the wave is structurally and fundamentally different compared to everything that has happened since the release of ”Permission Marketing”.

What should you do to prepare your brand and company for the new marketing shift? You need to do two things:
1. Be educated. Read blogs, collect information, visit seminars. Don’t let your competitors run you owner.
2. Take a look at your agency. Do they still provide you with ”dumb” Flash-sites, gif banners and one-way communication strategies. You deserve and need better.

And if you are a CEO/Board Member, you may want to check this out.

I’ll leave you off with one last quote, this time from R.E.M.:

It’s the end of the world as we know it – and I feel fine.

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