Predictions are also that youngsters will become less adept at face-to-face communications and that their online personalities will become very different from who they really are. Anyone who has witnessed a group of youngsters interacting with each other via MXit – and often whilst they are in the same room together – will be able to testify to these trends.
It is appropriate that energy is being expended on these new media and channels and that they are extensively discussed and debated. They will change how we interact with people, market new products to people and communicate with them, as well as do research and interpret findings.
Does all of this change the essence of humanity? It certainly changes how things might be done as the decade progresses. It also challenges our ability to interpret the huge range of information flowing in. However, do these new trends deserve the capital-letter status and hype they are receiving at the moment? Is the human condition really actually changing? Were the same conversations not being had when the telephone, radio and television arrived?
The past ten years have led to a literal revolution in our understanding of how people use their brains to absorb and store information, how they use ‘fast and furious heuristics' to make buying decisions and how they take the outcomes as a guideline to drive future decisions. These processes turn out to have been with us for thousands of years – they are part of our evolution. In fact, as the pace of modern society becomes even more frenetic, these ancient survival mechanisms kick in as we have to cope with increasing complexity, more choice and much much more information. Did you know that a person’s innate sense of well-being changes how (s)he processes information and makes buying decision? It changes what information is really relevant and how it should be presented.
In a recent presentation from TNS’s Head of Consumer, Sebastien Janini, on the bottom of the pyramid – people at the poorer end of the wealth spectrum – a point he kept making was we need to understand these people and their lives, their motivations, desires, how they view their world, their cultures and worldviews. They are one of the ‘next big things’ in his view, with huge potential for new opportunities
If one takes these last two elements together, is this not still the essence of what marketers must do – understand the people? Does this not mean that, whilst the ‘how?’ might change, we still need to ensure we get the ‘why?’ – ie the human condition.
It was interesting that Janini kept making this point about understanding the bottom of the pyramid. When I was a young researcher, there was a massive emphasis on the rural market by many key multinationals. But that seems to have become lost with an increasing emphasis on ‘premiumisation’. There is a danger that a single-minded emphasis on digital and mobile may also lead to the bottom of the pyramid being ignored.
One of the problems we face is that South African business (and marketing and advertising) still has a largely western worldview implicitly embedded in it. Do marketers and advertisers really know how people live? There is plenty of research into people’s quality of life from many sources. There is data on what people’s real needs are. In thinking of new products, these fundamentals need to be examined explicitly. Look at the numbers. Then go and mingle with the people to be targeted. This may mean some very real immersion time in representative communities. When last did you spend quality time in a township or an informal area? Can you relate to the people you are marketing to? Really relate?
So, by all means, let us play with excitement and enthusiasm in the digital and mobile space. Let us debate and discuss and write papers and articles and experiment and have fun and learn. But let us also not forget that we are dealing with people, who actually evolve much more slowly than the world they build around them. There are fundamental advances to be made in making sure we understand people, how they live and what drives them to manage their lives in certain ways: their worldviews, their cultural filters, their morés, what is in their heads and how it got there.
In the excitement of new media, marketers, communicators and researchers cannot afford to forget the basic raw material they deal with: human beings.
