Used to be that advertising to lure new customers involved sponsoring a TV show or running ads in broad distribution magazines and major newspapers. As TV shows became increasingly expensive to produce, cost conscious business folks would buy 60 second time slots to air their message.
Of course, if a producer could squeeze in 20 or more commercials into a show that was considered “good” by everyone but the audience. When you cut twenty minutes out of a show with interruptive, dramatic, attention seeking ads the audience goes elsewhere. When Netflix, Hulu, Amazon and others started delivering high quality commercial-free subscription TV, traditional TV began its fade into history. The younger generations don’t even have TVs. They are entertained on their computers.
As to broad distribution magazines and major newspapers, they are being replaced by newsfeeds, blogs and specialized newsletters. Being monthly or weekly, the old technologies were too little too late. And since they killed CO2 consuming trees by the billions, they were antisocial as well.
Trade shows and conferences took over marketing for business to business (B2B) but other than ComicCon and a few consumer electronic shows these vehicles didn’t cut it for consumers. Time lag and expenses were the big failings so webinars and podcasts filled in but weren’t very good marketing vehicles.
Ultimately, here is what the future will bring us. Personal, intimate, stirring content that delivers the feelings or recognition the customer wants. For advertising, the experience is king. Subaru is “love,” KIA promotes that you will “Feel Something Again,” Jeep is selling “Pure and Simple”, and Toyota says they are “Hope” while making you cry during their latest ad. Another Jeep ad helps you relive that adrenaline rush you experienced during the Jurassic Park movie. At least judging from this year’s Super Bowl ads, that is what they tried to accomplish.
And of course the game itself made you feel all those things and more.
Here’s an example of what happens when owners completely miss its value of feelings. A few years ago the GoPro action camera company had a newsletter that they sent out to the owners and prospective owners of their cameras. It was filled with video clips from action camera users jumping off cliffs or swimming with sharks or surfing massive waves, and… it was breath taking. The viewer was left feeling exhilarated.
Those viewers went out and bought GoPro cameras. The company raised the prices to take advantage of their popularity but stopped making the camera competitive. The camera started to loose market share so they discontinued the newsletter to save money.
The newsletter was worth more than the camera company. Here is an example link of the footage. It was marketing gold.
We are roughly one year away from a presentable set of glasses that project local information of importance into your peripheral vision. These glasses will present reality as seen through glasses, only augmented. The same gadget will enhance and monitor and even record your perceptions and provide you with all imaginable relevant wisdom on the spot. This will be the world of augmented reality just as your smartphone screen displays now — only better. This gadget will ultimately replace smart phones because like the smartphone, users will be better equipped to experience this rapidly changing world.
And this technology will not only replace our memories, it will deliver our feelings.
That’s where future marketing comes in.
Facial recognition will not only remind us who we are talking to but tell us what is going on in their life. It will remember our great experiences and show us similar emotion inspiring experiences that are close by. For example, you are walking through a community integration center (they used to be malls) near a clothing store and your device will show you a favorite video — only this video has you in it wearing a shirt that is sold near by. Who could resist? And if you walk by the store, the price adjusts just for you.
Of course, the big feature of future marketing will be that interjections of noise into your space will have to be personal, polite and pertinent, otherwise the viewer will opt out. But if the advertiser can learn to treat the customer with respect the future will be theirs.
Future Insights 
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