Harbus

Issue date: 3/14/05 Section: Viewpoint

Could it be that mass marketing is dead? It would certainly appear so with the desperate attempts by behemoths like McDonalds, Coke, and Nike to capture our attention with flashy commercials and endless giveaways. But, if mass marketing isn't dead, it's surely on its last leg.

Not long ago, it was common for start-ups to blow their entire advertising budgets on one Super Bowl commercial. Nowadays, all a company needs to gain exposure to millions of potential customers is their product in the hands of the right celebrity. Just look at how much free advertising T-Mobile got for its Sidekick cellular phone after Paris Hilton had hers hacked into recently.

Part of mass marketing's problem is that it's facing increasing competition for consumers' limited attention. With the proliferation of media, marketing is increasingly being segmented into smaller groups. In the past, families would sit around a television starving for content while marketers dished out an endless supply of commercials. Today, families are on the go and fending off "content" whether it is from telemarketers, popups, spam, spyware, etc. No longer can businesses afford to blindly send large volumes of the same message to unqualified recipients. Nor can they continue to treat all consumers the same.

As the old way of thinking about how to market to consumers becomes obsolete, innovators like Susan Magrino, CEO of Susan Magrino Agency (SMA) are stepping in to offer companies a better marketing alternative.
Susan Magrino Agency is a marketing-based public relations firm founded in 1992. Magrino launched SMA after a successful nine-year career at Crown Publishing. Initially specializing in public relations for publishing and lifestyle clients, SMA quickly expanded into brand development for a laundry list of clients in industries such as travel, beauty, broadcast, and restaurants. The famed publicist of Martha Stewart, Magrino has witnessed first hand the evolution of mass marketing.

"Marketing is moving towards public relations," proclaims Magrino, "because the media has so much power." Magrino points to the Oscars, during which companies set up "Oscar Suites" where stylist could pick up freebies for their celebrity clients.

"Companies were hoping that the right star would wear their product on the red carpet and a photo of the celebrity and product together would appear in In Style magazine, US Weekly magazine, or on Entertainment Tonight, resulting in millions of dollars worth of free publicity," explained Magrino.

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