Old advertising and marketing vs. effective new media campaigns - Essay Example

?‘Old’ Advertising and Marketing vs. Effective New Media Campaigns Both Fordism and post-Fordism have to do with the organisation of businesses, but they are normally extended to include political and social spheres (Tuten, 2008). Fordism was the accepted process and practice in the industrialisation of nations in the past. It was focused on delivering effectiveness in the processes of mass production. Post-Fordism, on the other hand, is applied in modern definitions of industrial progress as the previous grew less efficient in handling the new technical innovations (Ioannides and Debbage, 1997). The fundamental values of Fordism were the establishment of big processing production facilities that were characterised by inflexibility in a procedure that was supervised by a hierarchical and bureaucratic executive system. A partially-skilled workforce was engaged to function in repetitive as well as highly specialised operations. The dominant political and societal constituent of Fordism was that it was centred on shielding the national market (Boynton and Milazzo, 1996). It aimed to preserve jobs within borders with the aim of selling principally to the populace of the local market. Fordism, which got its name from Henry Ford, proposed the design of central control, homogeny and the capacity to cultivate and meet the requirements necessary for the mass consumption of products and services market. Post-Fordism, on the other hand, has to do with the era of technical advancements which have altered the entire procedure of production. The extensive, bureaucratic business establishment that characterized Fordism is no longer relevant. The post-Fordist model is evident in the reorganisation of the administrative structures of organizations. In such corporate structures, there are fewer employees, as well as the specialization of all operations. Post-Fordism is interested in consumer preferences, and market segmentation (Kompare, 2006). The basic doctrines of post-Fordism would be making use of more flexibility, and ensuring that the labour force is only constituted of specialists, with blue collar skills being subcontracted to other companies market. There is a greater stress on individual consumer tastes and distinctiveness instead of the perception of the consumer force as a joint homogenised unit. Another critical disparity between post-Fordism and Fordism is that the former sees the economy in international terms, having given up its domestic interests that were characterised by the Fordist glory days after World War II (Ioannides and Debbage, 1997). Both post-Fordism and Fordism are widely used in many industries in developing as well as developed nations in the world (Boxall and Purcell, 2008). The technology division has clearly espoused the principles of post-Fordism, but the Fordist principles are still used by many corporations. The bigger the business and the more conventional its manufactured goods, the more it is inclined towards observing the Fordist values of organisation. Moreover, the post-Fordist method of conducting business is quickly gathering momentum, and is the obvious practice of the future (Boxall and Purcell, 2008). Post-Fordism has complicated the conventional Marxist connection between the employee’s labour time and the extent of her or his misuse (Hutchison, 2008). As work becomes more dematerialised and the distribution of labour in business production declines, investment not only takes precedence in the working hours in which commodities are produced, it uses up all of the employee’s time, and thoughts. Goods are formed not to be used up directly, but as a type of new communication, language, and knowledge (Grainge, 2008). The purpose of consumption these days is not just the creation of products, but the duplication of new variations as well as conditions for the manufacturing process (Grainge, 2008). The operations of the immaterial businesses become the creation of subjectivities that are creative as well as cultural categories, and not financial ones. Consumption produces a customer who does not only consume, but communicates with the provider market (Boynton and Milazzo, 1996). One of the most important characteristics of the post-Fordist economy is the dependence on market segmentation and not mass consumption market (Weber, 2007). Market segmentation stresses on specific features of a commodity, or generate a specific commodity to appeal to particular market segments, which differ in race, income, ethnicity, gender, age, and other aspects (Weber, 2007). Consumerism, in the post-Fordist economy, refers to the process whereby goods and services are target marketed to specific niches, using psychographics, demographics, and other advertising techniques (Boynton and Milazzo, 1996). It has to do with the entire purchasing process, from the time when a customer decides to buy something, to the moment when the product or service is actually purchased (Boynton and Milazzo, 1996). The social as well as financial post-Fordist system emerged in the context of the seventies consumer society. Companies began to generate services as well as ideas, and immaterial goods instead of tangible products. Even when companies created tangible goods, they began to show more interest in the abstract properties of those products. Not just the value of use, but also the value of sign (symbolic value) grew to be perceived as being important market. In the post-Fordist economy, consumers are identified as being newly empowered. These consumers have multifaceted needs and are unmanageable. The marketers no longer have the ability to rule over the consumers’ needs (Kompare, 2006). Aesthetics and design are now considered as being an important requirement in the presentation of any product or service that is offered to consumers. Post-Fordism is developing in times that are neo-liberalistic. If liberalism is the fundamental ideology of capitalism, then its evolution is neo-liberalism (Spurgeon, 2008). It encourages the privatisation of public corporations, as well as deregulation (Caldwell, 2002). It greatly advocates for the predominance, in modern society, of the private sector. Neo-liberalism is a development that is progressing alongside globalization (Boxall and Purcell, 2008). Neo-liberal strategies support market dynamics and profit-making ventures as the most proficient methods of generating and providing products and services. They also downplay the function of the state and object to government interference in social and financial affairs. The practice of economic globalization is based on the philosophy of getting rid of borders and obstructions between states so market forces can advance the global financial system (Boxall and Purcell, 2008). There is a new environment for marketing. The principles of the four P’s (right product, promotion, price, and place) have been altered (McStay, 2009). Creating the correct promotion in the present marketing environment appears to be almost impossible. As the mass media keeps separating into tinier niche markets, psychographics and demographics are closely scrutinised by corporations that wish to remain relevant. Information for the targeting of zip codes is overwhelming. With more media delivery choices, and the increased activity, marketing has been forced to effect various changes. Multinational companies have started to concentrate primarily on brands as well as brand management (Bratton and Gold, 2007). A brand is a concept, an attitude, and a lifestyle (Moor, 2007). The effect of this belief has seen the formation of superstores, inventive ad campaigns, and corporate campuses. It has also caused a transformation in the face of employment worldwide. Superbrand corporations centre on first forming the ‘soul’ of businesses, and then eliminating the onerous bodies of factories, unnecessary workers, and machines (Benkler, 2006). Creating a Superbrand is quite an expensive undertaking (Moor, 2007). The sense of the new priorities is not to expend capital in machines that will corrode, processing plants that call for continuous maintenance and workers that will grow old and die (Moor, 2007). Rather, funds should be invested in packaging, sponsorships, advertising, and expansion, because this is what will contribute towards the formation of super brands (Moor, 2007). In the financial realm, post-Fordism stimulated the decline of production and regulation, and inspired the rise of corporations as well as global markets. Mass marketing was substituted by flexible specialisation, and businesses started to stress on communication instead of command. The labour force altered, with a considerable rise in internal marketing, outsourcing, and franchising; as well as an increase in part-time vacancies, and home workers. Mass unions started to disappear and were substituted by plant-based negotiation tactics (Boxall and Purcell, 2008). Ideological as well as cultural transformations included the emergence of individualist varieties of behaviour and thought, as well as a tradition of entrepreneurialism. After the change in the process of manufacture, as well as the acknowledgement for the requirement for knowledge-based employees, education grew to be more specialised and less standardised (Ioannides and Debbage, 1997). Prominent philosophies that emerged were pluralistic in values, fragmentation, and post-modern eclectic approaches to the society. In the post-Fordist society, customers are prepared to pay more for high quality products that are also conspicuous. Multinational companies are increasingly investing in brand management, because the advertisements that are likely to affect consumers are those of specific brands. Advertisements are an important part of the culture of consumerism because they inform potential customers of the availability of goods and services that might interest them. In the Fordist era, advertisers customarily depended on a straightforward communications model where the function of the marketer was to program a message to be transmitted through TV, radio, and print ads (Benkler, 2006). The more advanced Web environment, on the other hand, compels the marketing industry to cater to the active position that the modern customer has adopted in marketing communications (McStay, 2009). The consumers of the 50s could not access information whenever and wherever they wanted (Spurgeon, 2008). They perceived the television as a unique instrument that informed them of modern goods that they might not have known about otherwise (Spurgeon, 2008). According to (Spurgeon, 2008), “…the commercials of the 50s ran alongside shows like NBC’s ‘The Howdy Doody Show.” Another popular advertisement was the ‘Rice Krispies with snap, crackle, and pop puppets’ (Spurgeon, 2008). When the program that was sponsored by the makers of the ‘Rice Krispies’ was ran, the advertisement showing the products of the company would interrupt the program at set intervals (Spurgeon, 2008). In a sense, the consumers who believed the words of the advertisements that praised the qualities of various products appear to have been mere functions of the capitalist culture. According to (Caldwell, 2002) the consumers of the fifties “did not necessarily question if the products they were purchasing were even necessary; they were merely grateful to be receiving information about seemingly special products that they could not have gotten from anywhere else.” As the number of advertisements increased, customers began to be irritated by the constant interruptions that marked their favorite shows. Compared to the 50s, the 21st century companies have to make use of pull strategies to draw customers through sites such as Twitter, blogs, and YouTube (McStay, 2009). The active customers of modern era are quite unlike the passive customers of the bygone era. They pick providers who will pay attention to their concerns, and include them completely in decisions. They are at ease when expressing their concerns, and ask contractors to clarify things in language that is easy to understand, and expect to operate in league with the suppliers in mutual decision making procedures (Boxall and Purcell, 2008). If a consumer wishes to search for extra information about certain products, he or she can now make use of the internet’s search engines and not have to rely on the marketers' information alone. According to Steenburgh and Avery (2008), the consumers’ reactions to commercials are experiencing a transformation. The active consumer prefers to be ‘talked to’ by any producers of products; not ‘talked at’ by the commercials of various products. It has been suggested that firms should try to get their consumers to begin talking, on company web sites, about various brands that they like (Weber, 2007). Some companies are trying to transform themselves and attract consumers by generating new content in the field of advertising (Steenburgh and Avery, 2008). They now regularly include their consumers in the assessment of their advertisements. YouTube, for instance, recently ran advertisers' videos and requested viewers to give feedback on which ads were better than others (Steenburgh and Avery, 2008). Consumption has grown to be important since it is gradually becoming the arena for the creation of personal identities. The concept of a consumer culture is vital in assisting people to comprehend how others make sense of their own lives even in their maturity (Weber, 2007). The consumer culture has also grown to be generationally dependent. Active consumers are affiliates of the technological advancement movement (McAllister, 2000). They generate or stimulate and endorse the creation of consumer goods. They have also labelled everyone outside their advanced world as being inconsequential. Active consumers are better informed, and thus, they purchase the best goods in the market that they desire (Weber, 2007). Owing to the awareness of the products in the market, most advertisers tend to focus on providing goods for these active consumers. Most of the time, these this group of consumers comprises the young people who are quite technologically savvy (Turow, 2005). The older generation consumers tend to rely more on the advice from the mass media and are quick in making decisions as to whether they will purchase the advertised product or not. They may not necessarily ask for the latest gadgets in the market, or the latest model of the product they desire to buy but will usually purchase that which has the most basic of functions (Weber, 2007). Older generation customers tend to make up a large percentage of the passive consumers group. Advertising communication models in the post-Fordist era is important not just for evaluating the commercial success of company advertisements with consumers, but also in comprehending how business values have been redefined within a broader set of cultural as well as political concerns. Advertising communication models are theories that seek to address how commercials influence consumers to buy certain commodities (Bakan, 2004). These theories try to explain and illustrate, at the consumer or purchaser’s level, the method by which marketing communicates and efficiently convinces people to buy a product or service (Bakan, 2004). Advertising managers use these communication models, overtly or implicitly, when they produce, endorse or experiment with advertisements. In the present post-Fordist era consumers are being transformed from merely passive to active consumers through engaging actively with their suppliers. As a result, more businesses are considering the possibility of disengaging advertising communication models that are intended for mass audiences in favor of narrowcasting where consumers are exposed to advertisement on a subscription basis (Kompare, 2006). In the post-Fordist era, marketers that are occupied with branding seek to create in consumers certain expectations that will be experienced on using the brand (Hutchison, 2008; Moor, 2007). Financial value comes from commercial transactions between consumers whether with contractors or employees (Grainge, 2008). Moreover, for the financial worth to be attached to a product, it has to have positive connotations for the business and be energized (Tuten, 2008). Media planning groups are able to examine the habits of consumers and categorize them according to the media platforms that they most prefer. This allows for the marketers to conduct successful advertisement campaigns with minimal wastage (McAllister, 2000). In conclusion, post-Fordist economies use advertising as a form of social communication that plays multifaceted roles in consumer capitalist communities (Grainge, 2008). Advertising has grown to be a powerful method of social communication where products mediate people’s relations (McStay, 2009). By utilising diverse theories of communication, marketing plays a critical role in the changing to an innovative culture, and, therefore, in the changeover to a symbolic media culture from being a discursive society. In this culture that promotes mass media different factors that determine a person’s social life, from politics to religion, are influenced by the profusion of images. Post-Fordist advertising has become a structure for social communication which endorses methodically distorted communication. Distortions are the outcome of techniques that are non-logical, non-rational and imagistic, and which instinctively and subliminally influence people. Post-Fordist advertising also endorses "product fetishism" (Grainge, 2008). References Bakan, J., 2004. ‘The triumph of the shill’, the corporation. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Benkler, Y., 2006. The wealth of networks: how social production transforms markets and freedom. New Haven: Yale University Press.  Boxall, P. F. and Purcell, J., 2008. Strategy and human resource management. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Boynton, A. and Milazzo, G. T., 1996. ‘Post-fordist debate: a theoretical perspective to information technology and the firm,’ accounting, management and information technologies, vol. 6, no. 3, pp. 157-173. Bratton, J. and Gold, J., 2007. Human resource management: theory and practice. 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