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Everything has changed. Time to change with it.

Today's marketplace challenges are not driven simply by the global recession and its affect on people's perception of "value."  This new, new economy has been building for the past ten years.  Evolving marketplace conditions have created a very particular consumer mindset; one which most marketers are woefully unprepared to deal with. Make no mistake; the economy is not the problem.  It has simply exposed the problem, like melting snow exposes the mud beneath.  

Here are the five conditions that have inured today's consumer and confounded scores of organizations:

1. Supersaturated with choice

In the United States alone, there are dozens of brands of toothpaste, hundreds of car brands (soon to be a lot less), thousands of organized religious groups and tens of thousands of non-profits. Google any product or service you can think of and take a look at the shear number of results.  There are somewhere between thirty and fifty thousand different brands in a typical grocery store, and there’s a plethora of new ones, and ones designed to look new, appearing every day.  Toss in clothing, electronics, books, restaurants, hotels, sporting goods, financial products, drugs, jewelry, insurance, professional services, vacation destinations, etc., along with club stores, dollar stores, convenience stores, specialty stores, TV shopping, direct marketing, the Internet, etc. and you’ll quickly get a feel for this particular condition.  And the flood of marketplace offerings and channels is not about to subside any time soon, because the rapid development and introduction of new products is essential to satisfy customers’ bottomless appetite for novelty and value.

2. Glut of conflicting information and media platforms

The Internet is now populated with tens of billions of web pages. While I've been typing this post tens of thousands of new pages have been added.  This is simply one blog out of close to 70 million (at least that's the number being tracked), and around 150,000 new blogs launch daily.  Don't even get me started with tweets. :)  And that same information glut exists in old media as well. There were close to 300,000 books published last year; over 7,000 of them were business books. There are tens of thousands of magazine titles.  In the very near future, there’ll be an almost infinite number of television channels as TV, radio, and the Internet converge providing access to streaming audio and online video right from your TV remote, which invariably will have a little search box built right in.  However, there’s something paradoxical about this “wealth” of information: It’s all conflicting. Find me a piece of information, and I’ll find you information that refutes yours, or at the very least, calls the validity of yours into question.

3. Radical transparency and message amplification

The second generation of web-based services referred to as Web 2.0, which emphasizes social networking, online communities, collaboration, interactivity, and user-created content, has created a hyper-connected marketplace. Customers are increasingly sharing information and opinions about products, services, people, and organizations. They’re posting photos, videos, reviews, recommendations, prices, and thoughts on anything and everything from new product designs and stocks, to corporate behavior and inner company workings. The whole concept of word-of-mouth has been turbocharged, turning the Internet into both a bullhorn for customer complaints and a massive market research channel.

4. Savvy, active discerners and participants

Today's customers “get it.”  Yesterday's passive consumers have become active discerners and meaning-makers of marketplace information. They don't passively sit around and consume commercial messages like they used to. Either they tune them out, by channel surfing, multitasking, or removing them from their media content, or, if the product or service is highly relevant to them, they get involved in some way. They may do detailed “research” on the Internet, or participate on a blog or some other online forum. Or, they may email their friends for their opinions or even create and post their own advertisements or other content. Consumers fully understand the game that is being played, and they are choosing to play it the way that best fits their fancy. 

5. Distrust in business

Customers increasingly don’t trust businesses or the people who run them. At least that’s the state of consumer trust in the U.S., as measured by various researchers.  The rampant media coverage of various blunders, indiscretions and scandals has fueled a cognitive bias in people, referred to as the availability heuristic, where they base the prediction of the frequency of an event occurring, like a person or company lying, on how readily an example can be brought to mind. So people are conditioned to distrust. Today, everyone is subconsciously assuming that business people are guilty until proven innocent.

So if you want to move forward and grow your customers and margins, you must stop blaming your marketing challenges on the economy, accept today's new marketplace realities, and start making substantive changes to how you appeal to today's very new customer sensibility.  Unfortunately (or fortunately if you're aware of what's happening), the old models don't work the way they used to and, despite wishful thinking, they never will again.

Posted June 10, 2009
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