Conclusion on the 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing and its relevance to today’s Digital Media enabled Market!
It has been more than 20 years since Al Ries and Jack Trout first published their book titled ‘The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing’. This was one book that got sold like crazy coz it made a lot of sense backed by good logical market exposure of the authors. This book is still one of the must read books for any marketer to understand the market and the efforts needed for market penetration and to eventually lead. However, the market and marketing efforts have evolved a great deal since then. The majority of the changes have happened during the second decade than the first. The major influencer clearly has been Digital Media and its wide spread acceptance globally.
The blog series published thus far was an effort to relate the current world with the immutable laws defined by Al Ries and Jack Trout. We went with one law at a time and compared that with the current market scenario to understand the relevancy of the immutable laws with today’s market that is equipped with the ammunition of Digital Media. The major difference in the 1990s and today’s market is clearly the availability of data and the power of information sharing like never before.
The earlier days were completely dominated by traditional media such as print and electronic media that worked purely on a broadcasting model. Brands had the power of spending money on buying prime media slots and could broadcast at will. The smaller players in the market had very little to say unless they got the backup of an investor. Brands could dictate the information sharing and could share only such information that they intended to except for some news strips. They even used to conduct press meets and release statements once in a while to come out with their side of the story of things that were not projected appropriately. The consumers had very little to decide on what to believe and what not to, coz the entire media was controlled by the cash rich big brands.
Today’s world is comparatively more independent of the monopoly to a great extent unlike the 1990s. Today’s consumers are smart enough to evaluate thoroughly before making a decision coz the information is more reliable and handy than before. Such is the situation that journalism as a profession itself is facing a threat, as the news comes up on social media channels even before the news channels report. The news channels are facing the heat if they come up with a biased report s or reviews of a brand. The consumers have access to a wealth of information through the use of smart devices such as phones and tablets that are connected to the internet all the time. Why would you need a journalist to cover a news when a person standing at the location of the event could capture the entire episode on his smart device and upload that on multiple social media platforms much before the news reporters could get to know about it. Such is the power of Digital Media and real time information sharing.
When information is shared there will be people who will consume it as well. With digital media being so strong that each and every online activity being able to be tracked, the marketing strategies in today’s competitive market is getting flexible and more aggressive than before. Gone are the days when a market strategy would get decided in an office board room and then got implemented by another team and the board would convene again to discuss about the aftermath of the defined strategy after some time. In today’s world the marketers are needed to be on their toes all the while when a strategy is getting implemented. There should be contingency plans planned well in advance to counter any deviation from expected outcomes. The market has become so dynamic that the consumer’s mood swing has to be evaluated using a sentiment analysis tool in order to get a hold on the consumer mentality about something. The best part however is that we have something to evaluate it now unlike the yesteryears. It is therefore fair to conclude that not all the 22 immutable laws of marketing are applicable to today’s digital enabled market but a few definitely are as they address the fundamentals of the marketing principles that seldom changes.
I know that we have just scratched the surface and have made an attempt to show only the tip of the iceberg. We hope the blog series has been useful to marketers of today to think alike and to think ahead of the market and to succeed. Please send us your suggestions so that we can delve far deeper than what we discussed till date and help make a better digital world.
