Advertising: Now a Conversation

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As consumers, we had little ability to question the content, or the companies, or gather independent perspectives. The effectiveness of advertising became, in part, dependent on the trust we developed in a brand.

But while most of today's adults are well acclimated to this "industrial marketing" approach, it does not reflect the historical norm of human behavior. For thousands of years before communications became industrialized, people chose a bakery or blacksmith based on word-of-mouth recommendations, reputation, and social networks. Selection of a vendor might reflect social class, neighborhood, recommendation, or personal relationship. Endorsement by royalty, for example, was one of the first forms of mass marketing precisely because it took the sociology of recommendation and, because of the fame of the endorser, allowed the recommendation to scale beyond personal relationships.

So today, as a new set of community technologies develop on the Internet, we should not be surprised to discover that the sociology of how we buy isn't new at all. In fact, it is as old as civilization. Today's markets will come to resemble these pre-industrial markets, with some major exceptions. Our pre-industrial ancestors were constrained by time and distance in developing opinions about vendors. But in the post-industrial world, reputation, relationships, and recommendations can come at any time from anywhere to affect a purchase decision.

Back to the Future

This technology-enabled shift back to pre-industrial market behavior changes the way we react to advertising in a fundamental way. Where advertising was once a desirable form of information—a way for me to hear about something I hadn't been aware of—there's now such an enormous amount of information available on demand that advertising is simply annoyance: one-sided, questionable, and provided at the wrong time.

Before you entirely discard the notion of advertising, however, it is worth noting that it can and will change. Companies will recognize that there is a conversation going on in the marketplace that they should join, not dominate. Consumers, experts, and competitors are all talking about your company, its products, and the competition's products. Joining that conversation means providing information, answering questions, and responding to concerns instead of just broadcasting one-way messages. Participating allows a company to correct misinformation, offer insights, develop a reputation, and create a relationship with the most influential people in a given market.

Once a company has become a part of the conversation, conventional one-way advertising can serve a meaningful purpose. It can draw attention to the conversation and to the company's participation. It can alert a market to change. It can be a form of information that is valuable again—information about where and when the market is operating and how to engage with it.

Shelton is a co-founder and partner of The Conversation Group, a communications consultancy helping companies to navigate blogs, social networks, and other online communities .