Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose

Or marketing's just the same as it always was, despite the technology.

This post is prompted by a blog post from PRGeek (Jon Silk, @prgeek) from a social media conference today. He suggests in a recent tweet "Old media: Stick a celeb in an ad. New media: Stick a celeb on the web. Social media: Stick a celeb on Twitter.".

My point is that although the techniques of marketing change as technology advances, the objective of marketing remains the same - it's to attract an unfair share of your audience's attention.

In the 17th century a row of shops would be competing for passing trade, but the one that paid someone to wear a sandwich board advertising their wares, or paid the town crier to shout about their goods, would be likely to attract more business. Technological advance has introduced print advertising, commercial radio, tv and cinema advertising, billboard advertising, the web and now a plethora of social media: The means change but the objective is the same.

Clearly the audience determines the tactics, so marketing single-dealer platforms to a universe of 45 significant investment banks requires a different set of techniques to marketing anti-virus software to both retail and corporate users (for example), but the objective remains the same. And it always will.