By-the-way, I would equate the new poker-fad to skate boarding…true, it has a lot of money flowing through it,but it will surely hit an exposure ceiling….remember how everyone had a skate board in the early 90′s?

The point of the post, which apparently you missed, was that marketers will have to change their strategies in order to capture the “love” of the new generation of consumers.

I don’t suggest that mundane products need to be approached differently. All I’m saying is that in order to really capture your audience (like Starbucks has done, for example), companies will need to identify themselves with the long tail, even if they’re selling short tail products.

Again, I’m talking about being the best company – not about being another player. There’s always room for mediocre also-rans…But who the hell cares about them?

So saying that billboards have suddenly stopped working, or that they’ve never worked, is a bit silly. They don’t sell the kind of high end consumer goods where part of owning them is liking the commercials, and feeling like you’re part of that image. Cars, jeans, perfumes, that sort of thing, is all selling mostly the image, and are the kind of commercials that you remember and can admit to being influenced by. The kind of products that could probably benefit from a MySpace page or a blog or something.

Outdoor advertising is usually selling shit that you can buy right away with very little commitment. Like this hotel or restaurant or outlet mall is at the next exit. Or ads for radio stations, which you can tune to right away. Or events or attractions in that area.

Or sometimes, really general products that could appeal to almost anyone, like Gutter Helmet or personal injury lawyers. I think claims that we have become deaf to traditional advertising, and are only interested in sneaky viral marketing where someone paid off Myspace or branded some cool Flash game, are a bit early. It’s definitely an exciting addition to advertising, and has a lot of potential for certain products, but we’ve got a long way to go before it really means anything.

The point of the post was that in order to reach this new, young, and ad-deaf audience, large corporations (and everybody, for that matter) will need to find a way to identify themselves with the long tail.

In an on-demand, personalized world, messages aimed at a mass audience become less and less effective. Companies who practice this kind of tactic cannot hope to engender any sort of “audience love,” which I think is a key component of sales and marketing for the younger crowd.

basically I’d be reapeting what Chris said, but I’ll have to add…

…Large corps buy up. For instance, if you have noticed in the past Yahoo! has been concentrating on buying sites that support a vast people network or community i.e. del.icio.us, flickr and various other sites. Best example Yahoo partnering with Six Apart! (Uh Oh?) Where as Google is going more into the office/business space with calendar, analytics and that new excel type thing.

… btw Interesting post.

And, while I’d like to see us harm big corporations a bit (put them back into a state of semi-normality and do away with the oligarchy), they won’t be going away with this generation, and I don’t see how you can believe that.

This generation likes brand name jeans, MP3 players, products, etc. That’s certainly not falling in line with niche/small business. They like fast food; they like anything fast and easy to get via “super stores,” like Wal-Mart or Target. They support those big corporations in one breath and other big corporations, both domestic and international, in their purchases from them. You likely do as well. It’s hard not to.

It’s not that I don’t understand and agree with your ideas of how some business is changing, but the basics of life aren’t going anywhere. Neither are many of the “got to have its” that teens push.

But I’m worried you’re missing the future for the trees.

My only question about this post is this – what the hell does ” ubiquitous ” mean ?

I don’t think you’re really grasping what ‘the long tail’ means. I’m pretty sure that it refers to the ability of online stores to maintain vast inventories, and sell a lot of low volume products, instead of focusing on a few select high volume “best seller” products.

So Amazon and Netflix make a lot of money selling books and movies you can’t buy at the mall. I don’t really see how that applies to MySpace.

And outdoor advertising works. Teenagers that are willing to add a commercial product to their friend’s list are not the only people that buy shit.