In times when we only talk about Artificial Intelligence, metrics have become synonymous with success and marketing teams are increasingly guided by commercial leaders, it is undeniable to come to the conclusion that advertising as we know it until now has changed.
Not necessarily for the worse, it’s good to say, but it has changed. Full stop. The big question, therefore, becomes: what would be the role of advertising within this new, more complex and fragmented context? Which, in my opinion, involves two paths that appear to be antagonistic at first glance, but which could be complementary in the medium term.
The first of them takes us back to the past and takes us back to the origins of our profession. After all, communicating is informing, but communicating within advertising is, above all, moving to generate action. And when we talk about emotion, we are not just talking about tears, but also about the act of causing a practical reaction in the receiver of the message, be it through commotion or excitement.
Quoting the father of modern marketing, Philip Kotler, “Advertising is the science and art of exploring, creating and providing value to satisfy the needs of the target audience”. In short, advertising is about genuinely connecting with your customer through brands and products that are also genuine to their lifestyle, so we need to look at “what” we are talking about, and not just “where” .
The second path, less romantic, but equally important, involves understanding the world we live in and the implications it brings us. After all, developing strategies and campaigns in 2024 is not even close to the scenario of twenty years ago. After all, naturally, the abundance of channels creates a shortage of attention.
And if the main currency we have is our consumer’s attention, the reality is that our battle has become immensely more difficult. Having a more “genius” campaign than your competitor’s has become just part of the overall goal; Today, we have to be more relevant than our friends’ posts, our favorite influencer’s new Reels, WhatsApp groups and much more that is at our fingertips.
This time, it is easy to conclude that we need to work more with our heads than with our hearts. If we think about it, however, a purely rational advertisement, if devoid of a truly unbeatable advantage, has a very high potential of becoming just a landscape. In other words, we have almost antagonistic scenarios within the same reality.
We are literally talking about two sides of the same coin, not necessarily different ones. And, here, it is up to us to understand which way the scales will tip in each of the daily decisions we make with our clients.
In the end, the “new propaganda” is made by even more hands so that it can reach the right people. Less ego, more collaboration and an even greater dose of data with courage. Let’s go together?
* This text does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the vehicle
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