Developments in technology and the evolution of marketing are inextricably intertwined. Technology has underpinned major milestones in the history of marketing since its inception. The process tends to go something like this:
1 New technology emerges and is initially the preserve of technologists and early adopters.
2 The technology gains a firmer foothold in the market and starts to become more popular, putting it on the marketing radar.
3 Innovative marketers jump in to explore ways that they can harness the power of this emerging technology to connect with their target audience.
4 The technology migrates to the mainstream and is adopted into standard marketing practice.
The printing press, radio, television and now the internet are all examples of major breakthroughs in technology that ultimately altered forever the relationships between marketers and consumers, and did so on a global scale. But of course marketing isn’t about technology, it’s about people: technology is only interesting, from a marketing perspective, when it connects people with other people more effectively.
There are plenty of examples of technology through the ages having a significant impact on various markets – technology that may seem obscure, even irrelevant today. Remember Muzak.
The point is that technology has the ability to open up completely new markets, and to radically shake up existing ones. The mainstream adoption of digital technology – the internet, the software applications that run on it, and the devices that allow people to connect to both the network and each
other whenever, wherever and however they want to – promises to dwarf all that has come before it. It heralds the single most disruptive development in the history of marketing.
Whether that disruption represents an opportunity or a threat to you as a business who gets clients through advertising depends largely on your perspective. I hope the fact that you’re here means that you see it as an opportunity.
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