Relationship: the driver of high-tech marketing.

• Author: Hall, Robert
• Position: MARKETING SOLUTIONS

"... they {companies like Microsoft} want students with the cred to make brands seem cool, in ways that a TV or magazine ad never could."

--"On Campus, It's One Big Commercial," The New York Times, September 10, 2011

ISN'T IT INTERESTING THAT TOP TECHNOLOGY COMPANIES are going after the most tech-savvy, social media-dependent group on the planet in such an increasingly local, person-to-person manner. According to The New York Times, these companies hired over 10,000 American college students on hundreds of college campuses this fall to be local brand advocates for the likes of Red Bull, H-P, and American Eagle Outfitters. For example, aided by information available on social media sites, these corporate marketing organizations recruited student leaders who, in turn, recruited teams of upper dassmen. These students teams clad in T-shirts promoting their corporate sponsors greeted incoming freshmen by giving them coupons and helping unload their cars on move-in day. They call it "marketing for the students, by the students." The strategy marries a series of old and new ways. It raises questions for all of us: How do high tech and social media enable, and even demand, new forms of high touch? How do mass advertising and central brands get personalized locally in this communication-enabled world?

The challenge of how to direct advertising dollars has never seemed quite so up in the air. Everyone recognizes that technology has changed everything, and yet, the more things change, the more they stay the same. Advertising is demonstratively less powerful than ever and yet every day we see that it has crept into some new square inch of formerly unclaimed real estate.

Today, as my dentist of two decades tilted me horizontal, I was ready for that serene view of a white ceiling (think white noise) and instead was shocked to see a television screen anchored to the ceiling, showing me business news mixed with a steady diet of advertisements. High tech and ubiquitous marketing conspired once again to invade a portion of what little white space that remains. How did a group of marketing types decide that dentist ceilings were the new--and perhaps among the last--frontiers of open, free space that needed to be claimed for media messages. Billboards, skywriters, airplane banners and even blimps claimed the outdoor sky long ago.

Relationships are still important

We are now in a new era that levers technology, mass distribution of marketing information and the...