What the US election tells us about how marketing is changing

smashed televisionGiven that the bulk of Futurismic‘s readers are US-based, I doubt we’re going to get much sense out of you for a few days while the smoke clears… and if you’ve come here looking for a respite from the election topicality, please accept my apologies and this uber-cute box of puppies. [No, for real, live webcam feed! Via MeFi, of course.]

But for the rest of us (and those of you tuning in regardless) here’s a topical (and pretty much non-partisan) note from the master marketer, Seth Godin, who notes that this year’s presidential election has turned a lot of old marketing truisms on their head. F’rexample:

TV is over. If people are interested, they’ll watch. On their time (or their boss’s time). They’ll watch online, and spread the idea. You can’t email a TV commercial to a friend, but you can definitely spread a YouTube video. The cycle of ads got shorter and shorter, and the most important ads were made for the web, not for TV. Your challenge isn’t to scrape up enough money to buy TV time. Your challenge is to make video interesting enough that we’ll choose to watch it and choose to share it.

Zing! Of course, most of us know that already, but hey – it’s nice to feel ahead of the curve sometimes, ain’t it? 🙂 [image by Scott89]