Vanishing Mass Market

BusinessWeek magazine has a special report this week on the brand new world where one-size-fits-all standardization no longer flies -- it's a world where the days of mass marketing is rapidly vanishing. The emphasis is shifting from selling to the anonymous crowd of millions to becoming relevant to individuals. Our society has become more diverse, and differing values being aspired to. Gone are the days of wanting to be like everybody else. As M. Lawremce Light, McDonald's chief marketing officer puts it, "From the consumer point of view, we've had a change from 'I want to be normal' to 'I want to be special.'" This has atomized the market segments -- not only by demography, but more importantly, by product preferences. From an advertisers perspective, Eric Schmitt of Forrester Research says, "Monolithic blocks of eyeballs are gone. In their place is a perpetually shifting mosaic of audience microsegments that forces marketers to play an endless game of audience hide-and-seek." And figuring out the right way to send the right message to the right person is not easy. David Martin, president of Interbrand Corp. says, "An increasing heterogeneous marketplace requires much more one-to-one communication, instead of one-to-many communication, like advertising." Read the in-depth article for more.