The Wisdom of Crowds

The call to move more marketing dollars online started in earnest a few years ago with a limited number of brave pundits. Even then, most of those recommendations seemed to conservatively advocate that online marketing should not simply be an afterthought, and that it deserved a bigger share of the marketing pie. Things have changed.

Now, the advice to embrace online marketing is no longer “out there” and it seems quite suddenly we are dealing with what author James Surowiecki wrote about in The Wisdom of Crowds. It’s always great to push the business frontier and be an innovator, but many companies are more comfortable operating in the sphere of established thought…the wisdom of crowds if you will.  In a relatively short period of time, we have gone from the experts saying spend some budget online to many saying spend most of your marketing budget online.

Last week, Jonah Bloom, executive editor for AdAge magazine, joined the crowd with an interesting article (AdAge requires a minimum of a sign-up to access articles, and in come cases, payment). His quote: “It’s not that over-the-Web content will necessarily replace other media…but that it totally changes all media and all the old media and marketing rules.” In Bloom’s article, he quotes Clark Kokich from Avenue A/Razorfish: “The Internet is not just an advertising medium. It’s a sales channel and CRM tool. The best online marketers have learned to optimize everything from the first impression via a third-party publisher, through the Web site experience and on to online customer care and retention email.” The tone of Bloom’s piece certainly has to add fuel to the fire that the swing to online marketing has, in fact, swung.

Bloom joins one of his esteemed colleagues, Bob Garfield, in noting that online is transforming everything. Garfield’s “Chaos” article from almost a year ago shook the foundations of traditional advertising. Garfield followed this with another seminal article this past fall titled “Listenomics.” More discussion on that article here. These articles aren’t coming from radicals on the marketing fringe: they are coming from people who sit at the center of the advertising press universe.

This trend will likely continue. Several studies have confirmed this is not an anomaly. We’ve discussed it previously here, here, and here.

The gist of most of these articles is clear. The Internet is not simply another “channel.” It changes the marketing equation with a broad range of unique capabilities and attributes. The Web is measurable, it permits real-time transactions, and it helps move marketing from selling to what Seth Godin calls “storytelling” and what Doc Searls calls “conversations.” Some people in the industry may be frightened by the end of the seller-controlled marketing world of the past. Others will see it as a new era where marketers must accept the fact that the buyer is now in the driver’s seat. Your point of view on this tumultuous change will depend on whether you think the glass is half full or half empty. As for me—keep pourin’ baby until it’s full to the brim.