This has been on all our minds here at Exo. Modern Marketing. What do you think that means? Well, just like most people, I bet you think that it means ‘current’ marketing, or ‘actual’ marketing, right?
Wrong.
This little label of ‘Modern’ placed before ‘Marketing’ as its descriptor means anything but ‘actual’ or ‘current’. Same for ‘Traditional Marketing’: it doesn’t mean ‘usual’ or ‘conventional’ marketing.
For those of us who write about marketing, these misleading descriptors often cause our readers to misunderstand our meaning. Well, at Exo, we’ve had enough! Let’s ruffle some academic feathers here by redefining the entire history of marketing, shall we? After all, we’re marketers, rebranding is our speciality!
There are three main eras (brands) of marketing. The ancient, the old, and the new.
When I say Ancient I mean, let’s say 1836, the first time someone paid for advertising in a newspaper. 1867, first recorded billboard rental. Let’s say everything that happened before 1905 when the University of Pennsylvania offered the first course in the field (It was called ‘The Marketing of Products’). This is what academics refer to as ‘Traditional Marketing’.
Then we had a clumsy pre and post Mad Men type of period. The Old times. Sit, smoke, drink, and think of clever catch phrases. First radio ads in 1922. First TV ad in 1941. Systematization of telemarketing in 1950s, and so forth. Old stuff. We can even push the old stuff further in my opinion. Fledgling E-commerce in the 70s, database marketing and SPAM in the 80s, guerrilla marketing in ’84, etc. This is what academics refer to as ‘Modern Marketing’.
Then, there was an Event Horizon between 1990 and 2005. In ’91 Integrated Marketing Communications gained academic status, 1995-2001 saw the dot-com bubble redefine the future of marketing (kinda), 1996 saw the definition of viral marketing, 2000s saw the acceptance of Integrated Marketing and the first Integrated Marketing Research Center was created in 2002. That’s the time that I call Threshold Marketing.
So here we are, 2011, and we absolutely need a better way to define the marketing epochs because those old names are really confusing.
- Instead of ‘Traditional Marketing’ let’s call it ‘Industrial Marketing’.
- Instead of ‘Modern Marketing’ let’s call it ‘Post Industrial Marketing’.
- Then we create a new category, my ‘Threshold Marketing’ era, so to speak.
And what should we call the era that we’re in now? Simple, we’ll call it ‘Integrated Marketing’.
We are in the era of Integrated Marketing… I like the sound of that.
