The Promise of the Early Days of “Social”
In the early days of “Social Media,” it initially seemed as though big corporations and their social media sites were giving every day people the power to have a voice in media and finally get their “15 minutes”(or so they thought). Would they record their camping trips or birthday parties? And if so, they had the freedom to share parts of their life with friends and relatives all over America and beyond. But it was astute Marketers who recognized what the corps were really doing. They weren’t gifting regular folks with the keys to the media palace. No. Something else more sinister was going on.
It Was No Longer Just the Malware Bad Guys We Had to Worry About Online
Back in the long gone, comparatively “Happy Days of “Junk Mail,” the United States had gotten used to the reality that companies that collected their data would sell it to other large companies and the end result would be getting unwanted ads mixed in with the rest of one’s “snail mail.” The data was names, addresses and more. But the system was clunky and often not effective. Also, it was far from being a science. Looking back it was really sort of quaint, even endearing, that getting unwanted ads in your mail was really for most the worse we got. If we did not want getting those ads in our mail, we could just throw them. There was even a phone number we could call to “get off the list” and therefore pretty much stop getting promotions at all. Ah, things were much more simple back then.
Thinking Back Compared to Now, Junk Mail Was Really Rather Innocent and Sweet
For the consumer, getting the mail and seeing envelopes and colorful pieces, was often in their face sell. sell and sell consumer it was a minor roll of they eyes as they thought or said out loud “This junk mail is annoying.” But many who said that were actually rather excited with what sent to them. Because occasionally, more frequently than pure chance, the junk mail in their eyes became interesting to them because offers would resonate with them and their interests.
Marketers in Those Days Would Get Neighborhood Demographics in the form of Home Addresses
Marketers in the days of “Junk Mail” would tell businesses that they could get ads from small businesses in front of exactly the right people for their company. But this was often far from truth with lots of ads showing up in the boxes of individuals who really were not drawn into buying. Sure sometimes the mail recipient would bite and make a purchase, but big corporations were not happy with the still rather hit and miss approach that junk mail had. They wanted to reach their target demographic more often and not just hope that maybe by sending out thousands of pieces of junk mail, the return for their advertising dollars were not as good as they wanted them to be.
A New Breed Came into Town
But then some clever tech people began testing things called search engines and social media sites. From the very beginning, search engines and social media companies were actually not in the business of helping people to search or chat with their their friends. They were actually in the business of one thing: data. And they got better and better at collecting information from consumers. And yes, there was some pushback, but mostly from people who thought they were being rebels by when filling out the form to get, say an email address, to put in info that was not their real name, age and so on. They foolishly believed they were “Getting over on the man.” But they were wrong. Very wrong.
If you wish to continue reading this post, “NYC Create” encourages you to visit the other “Create” blog known as “USA Create.”