Jane Caro: The power has shifted

The power has shifted. It doesn’t matter whether someone has money or not, if you don’t have the right message “you’re stuffed” Jane Caro, founder and owner of Jara Consulting and lecturer at University of Western Sydney, said.

“What’s happened for advertisers and marketers is that they have to recognise, like everybody else, that the power has fundamentally shifted,” she said.

Speaking at the Australian Marketing Institute (AMI) summit tomorrow, Caro said that instead of “hammering people over the head” with a company’s brand or message “the power has moved from those people with large pockets to the population at large”.

“They [the population] are now entirely able to screen you out no matter how much money you put behind it.

“If the message is not relevant, if the message doesn’t mean anything to them, you’re stuffed. But you can have no money at all and send a Tweet that resonates and takes off like wildfire and suddenly you’re famous.”

The message is the key bit behind the marketing if you want to drive through the encompassing mass of the internet.

“Once upon a time you had to make your message relevant to everybody you possibly could, so they were often very bland as you didn’t want to offend anybody,” Caro said.

“Now that the whole world is your potential audience you just need to find a message that resonates with 1% of the world’s population and you’ve got more eyes than you’d know what to do with.”

Because the power has shifted it allows those without the background or money of large media buyers to jump into the game as well, creating a level playing field.

Caro remarked how some of the most innovative advertising recently has come from those a bit naïve as the naivety allows them “not to be hampered by the old rules”.

“I’m seeing some quite innovative advertisers now, they tend to be people who are starting to advertise for the first time.

“They’re recognising that if you put a lot more money into the creation of the message…and really work to make sure the message is absolutely spot on and fabulous and beautiful, you can spend less on the media because you’ll get 40,000 hits in the first day on YouTube because people like it.”

Brands need to take more risks, but also ensure they are still sensitive, according to Caro.

“You’ve got to be able to read an audience, you’ve got to be sensitive, you’ve got to be compassionate, you’ve got to be savvy and you’ve got to have some talent,” she said.

“We’re at the beginning of the era where really talented communicators are incredibly important because they are just naturally able to hit that right time, to hit that right level of self-deprecation, grace, and maturity.”

For more info on the AMI summit click here.

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