The Future of Advertising: What Sci-Fi Didn't Tell You

As children we read science fiction books, many of which had a setting that took place in the time which we now live. Time travel existed, cars flew, and teleporting one’s self into work each morning would have been routine. Sci-fi authors wrote about many of these extraordinary advances in technology, as well as their inherent positives and challenges. But few, if any, made reference to how advertisers and media companies would embrace change and prosper, or reject change and fail in this futuristic landscape.

In the future, traditional media isn’t dead. Every day, millions of people watch ads on TV, hear them on the radio, read them in magazines, or commute past them on their way to work. Some brands still find success messaging exclusively in traditional media, but the audience’s attention is far too divided and media is far too fragmented for most 21^st century brands to get by just “talking to” their customers. The messaging can no longer be one-sided; it must turn to “talking with” or “engaging with” the people. Digital media has become and will continue to evolve as the ultimate tool for dialogue and engagement between brands and their customers.

The top brands of today haven’t built themselves using traditional ads. In a Brand Channel study inquiring about which brands have had the strongest global impact, respondents top-ten brands included: Google, Apple, YouTube, Wikipedia, Starbucks, Nokia, Skype, Ikea, Coca Cola, and Toyota. Four of these brands didn’t even exist more than 15 years ago, four of these brands are entirely internet-based and produce no tangible product, but even more astonishingly, seven out of these ten brands built themselves into what they are today without heavy weight in traditional ads at all (Ho & White, 2009). Instead, they are built through interactions, user-generated content, and brand advocacy. To put the importance of brand advocacy into perspective, a Weber Shandwick advocacy study showed that “word of mouth is the number one purchase decision influencer, even opinions of strangers online trump advertising” (Striefler, 2009).

The tools that will allow brands to succeed in the future will be those that allow them to tell their story, listen to the stories of their consumers, and engage in a dialogue with them and their communities, both physical and virtual. This philosophy of engagement and social interaction is best served with fully-integrated campaigns. Media isn’t as cut and dry as it used to be and advertisers must think bigger. Every touch-point between a brand and its consumer is media, and when brands find ways to “talk with” their customers at all touch-points, the conversation deepens and so does the relationship.

This future of advertising isn’t science fiction, it is happening now. Brands can go digital, they can go social, and they can be in places that their competitors wouldn’t think to go. But there is one giant variable, and that is the brand’s behavior. We as advertisers are building relationships with our consumers. Just like a marital relationship, our brands’ relationship with their customers must be built on trust. In order to build trust, brands must be transparent; the days of sweeping mistakes, faulty products, or ethical faux pas under the rug are over. There is too much at stake and information is too easy to obtain and disseminate.

The sci-fi books being written today won’t tell us what specific digital tools we will be using five years from now, but it is guaranteed that digital media, social interaction/engagement, fully-integrated media strategies, and trust will all play critical rolls in the future of advertising.