Marketing trends are catching on

Today's Wall Street Journal gives special attention to how businesses are trying to attract attention, in its special reports on marketing! Two articles of particular interest to library-land inhabitants are The Marketing Maze and, from the Advertising section, Dell Skips Tech Talk for a More-Personal Link (yep, a subscription is required to read these). The former reports on the various communication channels marketers are exploring to snag a piece consumers' increasingly divided attention. Marketers seek to fuse themselves into life events, as one marketer put it, rather than relying on the more traditional approaches they've used in the past. The messages are becoming increasingly more targeted, and so are the marketing channels. Exciting times for sure!

The second article is an especially important one for service providers. The article sketches out the new marketing initiatives Dell is undertaking to portray its products as more than just an assembly of technology components. Instead, the company wants to highlight the emotional aspects of computing, such as sharing photos and making videos, employing the tagline, "Purely You" to capture this focus on personalization. A brand consultant remarks that this is a good move because competing on product features alone isn't enough since other companies can easily duplicate those advantages. In library services where so much of what we do is intangible, good marketing relies in part on an understanding and appreciation of patrons' emotional connections with the library.

You can also listen to a WSJ podcast about how marketers are trying to sort out the effectiveness of their advertising campaigns in this new marketing environment.

Categories: must_reads | neat_trends