Marian Salzman on Future of Advertising

OurBlook interviews Marian Salzman, new president of Euro RSCG Worldwide PR, North America .

Social media are transforming the way that companies conduct PR and marketing campaigns. Can you explain the changes you have seen?

MS: Today, PR people can't just broadcast messaging, no marketing communications discipline ... no marketer can. We've entered the age of the trialogue, where the conversation begins when the third and the fourth voice weighs in and revises and refines the "story" making it their own, constantly tweaking it. It means marketing has become more like curating a game of "Telephone" where the smartest marketers (and politicians and communicators) are going out with a single theme (think Obama and Change, think Apple and Innovation) and ensuring that message remains the constant in other people's stories. Broadcasting isn't where it's at; at best, narrowcasting over human mediums is the near future. We're all billboards, and we're all for sale. Our patronage and loyalty makes and breaks marketplaces and messages.

How is this affecting the journalism world, particularly newspapers who have been focused on traditional, ad-supported models? While Craigslist is usually cited for the demise of classifieds, is there anything other than the economic downturn to blame for the decline in display ads?

MS: Real-time is the new normal, so a paper feels stale, but a credible news organization that published in real-time with a newspaper-like organization behind it may well win. The issue is what will fund the news. My argument (since 1996 when I wrote about it in Advertising Age) is contextual commerce. I read about the Maldives and can click through and book a vacation; I skim an article on Springsteen and can buy music or a ringtone. Everything will be connected and refer me from one venue to the next, with products and services for sale in micro-bytes. Display never made sense in the modern world. It feels like advertising bling. Very last decade. Craigslist is efficient and easy to master and that's what people seek ... one to one connectivity with products and services they want, hyper-local search engines to maximize ease of access.

What advice would you give newspapers that are currently trying to create a new model for revenue?

MS: Sell your audience. Sell them unconventionally. Leverage local. Local is the new global. Local is what matters and resonates. News and commerce need to be linked more completely to fund credible independent news. Also it is a matter of knowing your readers. Newspapers can sell audiences at a premium if they know them thoroughly and completely and can mobilize them for a cause or a product launch.

Are magazines in the same boat as newspapers? If sleek, prosperous Gourmet magazine had to fold because of plummeting advertising, is there really much hope for other publications? What can they do?

MS: Gourmet was of its time and today other publications will flourish, potentially in other formats. The concept of eating aficionados banding together in a community resonates but the packaging may not have been right for the era; why pay for the gloss when the reader wanted the content. Context needs to be programmed more creatively and in different portions.

Is there anything else you would like to say about advertising and print media?

MS: Advertising will be reinvented in the next few years to be about persuasion and grassroots activation. True creativity will be the individual who can change people's minds. Political organizers will be the new hot recruits for marketers. But we will still want media, just delivered in different formats, and funded via different models. We're news and culture obsessed, just not ready to devote hours to devouring newsprint.

(Marian Salzman is known as a leading "trendspotter" and for popularizing the term "metrosexual" into American culture. She has authored or coauthored 15 books. She has launched Newsengine, Euro PR’s revamped news bureau. She calls it "a hybrid of new and traditional media relations plus grassroots campaigning, it will, among other things, spread clients’ brand messages through Twitterville, Facebookland and all the other places where people and media live today. ")

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