Peter Kim has a thought provoking post on a quote from Lester Wunderman:
“We are living in an age of repersonalization and individualization. People, products and services are all seeking an individual identity. Taste, desire, ambition and lifestyle have made shopping once again a form of personal expression. A computer can know and remember as much marketing detail about 200,000,000 consumers as did the owner of a crossroads general store about his handful of customers. It can know an select such personal details as who prefers strong coffee, imported beer, new fashions, bright colors. Who just bought a home, freezer, camera, automobile. Who had a new baby, is overweight, got married, owns a pet, likes romantic novels, serious reading, listens to Bach or the Beatles. New marketing forms which will link these facts to advertising and selling must evolve – where advertising and buying become a single action.”
Spot on.
Crazy thing is that the quote is from November … of 1967. That is real thought shaping.
Peter makes the point that the quote (which helped to spur the direct marketing industry) can be applied just as fittingly to social computing and media today. Perhaps if we all go back and re-read and re-digest (or grok for you Heinlein fans out there) Wunderman’s words, we can spur the evolution of the next form of marketing which is surely ready to birth.