This is my fourth unsolicited network call, I am unlucky to use two different phones and it seems both networks have colluded to frustrate my day by calling me barely 15mins apart from each other. After getting a little respite from my obviously clueless networks, the sms’s begin pouring in; one wants me to send a code to win a corolla, another wants me to join an association I have never heard about and a third wants me to get a new song as my ring tone.
It is clear to everyone the nuisance that unsolicited messaging and calling does, when you are trying to just get through an otherwise tough day, you really don’t need mobile operators haggling over who should call you first and get your attention or brands trying to send you sms messages at the slightest opportunity. In my own case I was expecting a credit alert from my bank, so imagine the constant tension these guys where putting me in anytime my phone beeped, I rendered one too many curses that day and with every mad dash I made to my phone I was met with a clueless advertiser trying to sell me something I do not need and obviously do not want.
As a digital marketing strategist and a new media advertising consultant these unsolicited, untargeted, unwarranted advertising can be traced to two factors. One, a lack of understanding of the consumer/customer, his preferences or his needs. Two, a total lack of understanding of marketing/advertising in the new media age. When a brand intentionally decides to skip the process of understanding their niche audience, what they want, how they consume content, where they congregate and how they can be reached, then what results are a blind groping in the dark hoping to mass market to as many people as possible whilst at the same time fasting and praying that a few of them would buy and use your advertised product. Same strategy the smart Yahoo boy is using online, sending thousands of email at once and hoping one recipient becomes a maga/mugu.
I certainly do not have any intention of being a maga/mugu hence I think it’s a waste of time for brands to advertise/market in this way. The second point is a lack of understanding of marketing/advertising in the new age, most brands that are transitioning from traditional to digital marketing think that the same rules of shooting blindly in the dark applies in the digital age, someone sure hasn’t read Seth Godin’s Permission Marketing, most brand and advertisers are still stuck in the interruption marketing era, where a brand interrupts my otherwise stressful day to deliver a marketing message that I have no need of. Imagine I am driving to work, already very late, in the middle of the mother of all traffic jams and just when I expect to be given a little time out, my phone rings and my network wants me to give them my precious time.


I truly believe that whoever taught about the automated network calls must have had good intentions but as we all know good intentions alone are not good enough, in an increasing digitalized space the consumer/customer is looking for a brand that can target exactly what he wants or needs when he wants or needs it. Today’s consumers want brand/advertisers who can meet them on their own turf, where they congregate and hangout and who can deliver creative advertising that speak to a need, even needs that we didn’t think we had, clever marketers create a need for you and suck you in on why you should use their products to meet the needs that they have created for you.
Blanket mass marketing does no one any good, it sure doesn’t help me as the customer and it puts the brand doing it at a disadvantage in the eyes of their customers, what we need now are brands who can understand the customer’s needs and address those needs in a creative efficient way, whilst at the same time positioning their brands in front of their customers as the best alternative in a sea of mediocre mass marketing competitors