Thoughts on “Slow Marketing”

So I feel like this blog has been taking on a very negative tone, and I apologize for that. Perhaps it’s because of the hard economic times we live in, which seems very acute at the moment in the interactive/marketing realm, but there is a glimmer of hope on the horizon.

This article was published in Ad Age today, and I’m thankful that I’m not the only person that feels the juggernaut we know as “social media” has taken focus off of the fundamentals. I think the beta site released by CP+B is a good example of this. I was pretty taken aback when I saw it, although it is just a beta site so my hope is that it will be given a bit more visual appeal.

With sites like this, I see function being given dominion over form—for instance, the CPB site has very little form. A few monochromatic shades of greyish-brown and a hodgepodge of “social media” garbage. It seems that any traditional sense of visual hierarchy has been thrown out, the focus is on the youtube video, and it all begs the question “Okay, you’ve incorporated ‘social media’ features into the site. Very trendy, nice. But why does your audience care?”  Is it a megaphone with which to shout your relevance from the rooftops?

As with company blogs becoming the hot trend several years ago, such has been the case with youtube channels, facebook pages and twitter accounts (which, mind you, have something like a 65% abandonment rate). While the influence of these types of sites is well-deserved and well-leveraged in terms of functionality and inclusivity, it seems that the dressed-down designs of these sites has also been adopted into the modern design lexicon, perhaps to make users feel more comfortable with the site?

But what I am sure of is that this abandonment and lack of visual appeal is not going to last in its current form cause, let’s face it: what does these days? The social-media craze has grown extremely big, extremely fast, and lots of marketers have jumped on the band-wagon with little regard for its implications further down the road—when all these companies have abandoned their twitter or facebook pages for more traditional, targetable means of effective communication.

It’s not nearly enough to focus solely on form or solely on function, they must all work together and support one another. That’s what we call a “fundamental,” and there is no reason that fundamentals and exciting new technology can’t co-exist.