Some gurus have made a career out of saying really interesting things.

One of such things relates to sales and marketing in general.

The saying goes that when it comes to sales and marketing, some things are old and irrelevant, while the new and the modern is the only way to go.

Is it true that when it comes to business there’s the outdated art of “so and so”?

Can we talk about the “modern principles” of anything in business?

Let’s start with advertising...

There's no such thing as modern advertising principles.

There might be new PRACTICES AND TACTICS, but the old PRINCIPLES still apply.

The principles of good advertising remain always and are valid. The challenge for us modern business people is to creatively adapt them to changing times and changing circumstances.

The internet didn’t come and change any principles of advertising... we just found new ground and circumstances for applying ancient principles.

For instance on the idea of targeting... modern business commentators talk about targeting as a new principle derived from digital, online and performance marketing which should be applied to everyday situations and all businesses.

You’d think they had invented the concept!

Actually it has always been a core principle that advertising should be targeted and relevant!

I was shocked to find such “modern” principles being espoused in “ancient” advertising texts from the 70’s and 80’s.

My mother is a retired PR, marketing, and advertising professional... I learn some stuff from snooping around her old university textbooks.

Targeting and relevancy in advertising has always been a core guiding light! Why do we assume that business people of yore were okay with making irrelevant and poorly targeted ads?

The problem is, in the 50’s to the 80’s (and before) all they had was DEMOGRAPHIC information and so the best they could do was DEMOGRAPHIC TARGETING.

Advertising of that era would target certain neighborhoods, age brackets, occupation, sex, TV and radio stations, specific magazines and trade publications etc.

That was all the information that they had, and they made the best of it!

Today because of the prevalence of the internet and the proliferation of ways for people to consume information.... we now have the ability to get PSYCHOGRAPHIC information and we can now target and refine to people’s particular tastes.

Because of this, we don’t have to be now limited to age, sex, location and occupation in advertising; we can target people specifically who are interested in shark fin soup and advertise exclusively to them where they hang out over the internet.

Before the internet, the best you could was advertise on the most popular cooking show on TV and cross your fingers.

Not anymore! Now your advertisement can get to your target audience directly as she scrolls through Instagram.

I don’t have to advertise a sales training program over the general radio anymore because I can find and create audiences online who are interested in business development and advertise and push messages out exclusively to them.

The principle of targeted advertising isn't modern!

It's ancient!

We have just found modern application for ancient principles.

Facebook and Google ad practitioners didn’t invent the idea of targeted advertising.

They are just able to execute it to a finer degree and accuracy because of modern technology.

It's just the application of targeting and relevancy that has been expanded over time.

So long as humans remain fundamentally the same, there’s no reason to expect that good business principles should change over time.

When humans change, the principles of advertising will change.

Until then, there is no “new” anything.

And by the way, can we stop talking about the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s as ancient? You’d be surprised about what later kids from 3018 will say about our business practices today.