Trends in Marketing

Social media is changing the way organizations communicate and target their audiences—especially the young generation. In the modern age of technology , teenagers spend hours with their eyes glued to flickering smart-phones, iPads, and computer screens; advertisers have been scratching their heads on how to avail themselves of social media for a fundamental aspect of capitalism—profits.

Previously, information flowed very systematically and predictably: a source would provide information—a message—and the message would reach its destination, the receiver. Now, however, there must be interaction between the consumer and organizations. This interaction is what helps to build brand recognition; to go viral often means “big business.”

Society has already shifted from the point-to-point, two way conversation pattern to the current many-to-many collaborative communication pattern, according to an IBM Telecommunications report. The Fortune 500 are catching on to the trend, and of course, engaging it—social media now plays such an integral role in terms of marketing that it really is a “join or die” situation for businesses.

Twitter is the lead medium used by top Fortune Global 100 Companies, with over 77% of companies having an account. Over 56% of Fortune 500 companies have a Facebook. Re-tweets and likes on Twitter and Facebook, respectively, requires interaction between the source and the receiver. When the source provides information—for example, a celebrity posting dates of an upcoming event—the information needs to get forwarded or liked to gain greater exposure. The more followers a source has, the wider reach the message is sent to. Profits and brand recognition are inter-related, and in order to get the best brand recognition now, an organization’s message needs to be re-tweeted, or liked, or forwarded.

This has opened up entirely new field — social media marketing. Companies not only need to work with an entirely new interface and appeal to a different audience of consumers, they have to learn the art of the #hashtag as well. Learning that equates to optimizing messages to reach a target audience with a set of key words. Similarly, Twitter only allows 140 characters per tweet. Concision is vital in getting a message across to an increasingly short-attention public.

China is no anomaly to the trend. Over 90% of my classmates own or use smart phones and check social media platforms such as Weibo, a microblog service, and WeChat, owned by Tenecet Holdings Ltd. Companies can similarly use these platforms to target young consumers. However, as David Reibstein of Wharton said, “China used to make products for the mass market.” China may soon transition from a nation filled with price-sensitive consumers, which would be more of a mass market, to quality sensitive consumers, who would value branding.

Such a trend represents a huge opportunity for companies to increase awareness through Chinese new media and do research for profitable marketing in the world’s second largest economy.

I believe that understanding of both Chinese and Western culture is imperative to being able to access the Chinese market to full potential; images that communicate messages well to an American audience may be completely illogical to a Chinese viewer. I hope to use the cross-cultural skills I have gained by living in different countries coupled with the marketing communication skills I have learned at The London School of Economics to expedite the use of social media as a communication channel for business that seek to reach international markets.

#crossculture #socialmedia #advertising #internationalmarketing #workharddreambig