Advertising 2.0

By Edwin Chen

Advertising to promote a brand and get awareness is one of the most common ways to get consumer’s attention. Marketing attention has largely shifted towards the digital platform and through the internet where our search activity on our devices is yielding data through analytics to give us the best ad based on our internet behavior. As the platform refines our search, the targeted ads consumers receive will only have a higher accuracy based on what we intend to search for. As much as how the major shift is towards the digital and internet platform, assessing the sales metrics through PR and interaction with the consumer directly is still a necessity. Especially if the brand is well known with multiple platforms to market their sales.

More importantly, vendors also play a huge role in analytics. The vendor’s role is to assist with the sales mainly through interactions with consumers with the retail stores they are assigned to for example. I can speak from that perspective as a former employee at Whole Foods, there would be times where some of the days I would interact with vendors and give them an overview on how their product is selling. Much of the analytics and assessment is part of their role but for retailers on the floor, they can gauge an estimation of whether the product is moving on the shelves. Vendors with whom I have interacted from my perspective dives straight into consumer insights to scope how their product is selling and their feedback. Of course, customers depending on whom you interact with will or will not be willing to give their feedback. Most of the time it ends well as for the customer cooperation they are rewarded with a promotional coupon from the vendor and leave them their business card should the customer have any questions, comments, or concerns as a way to establish PR through the consumer.

Although advertising tactics such as through mail or printout ads are becoming more obsolete, the vendors will still be around for the future because of the customer service aspect and interaction is a part of PR. Brands still need to establish the trust and interaction of consumers and moving to completely digital with no human interaction will not reflect well.

Article Reference:

[1] Nichols, W. “Advertising Analytics 2.0 (hbr.org)”