Experiential Marketing Essay

Development of Marketing Trends It is accepted that both the concept and function of marketing have changed and keep changing (McCole, 2004: 2). Adams (2011) reminds the use of the concept of â€Å"live marketing†, which many year ago was used to describe anything where people where a â€Å"just† little more creative than not doing marketing at all. Nowadays, using creative techniques seems to have become almost commonplace (Ibid). Further on, more and more consumers began to perceive marketing trough a wide spectrum of different marketing communication channels (Smilansky, 2009: 1). Traditional channels include advertising, direct mail, packaging and sales promotion (Ibid). These aim to attract consumers’ attention by mainly focusing on the importance to the product/service functional features (Schmitt, 1999: 17). Sponsorships, digital marketing and public relations (PR) were introduced later (Ibid). After that, the integration of these communication channels which traditionally have been used independently, in order to create a synergetic effect and convey a consistent message to the target audience, promoted the development of a new concept called integrated marketing communication (IMC) (De Pelsmacker et al. , 2010: 17). Nevertheless as marketing techniques consumers themselves have also evolved. Been so often subjected to a variety of media channels and marketing methods was already starting to turn them against the use of marketing, making them even more disinterested (Adams, 2011). What this provoked was the rise to the trends of guerrilla marketing techniques, live stunts and a variety of other marketing communication channels (Ibid). The fact is that these are also becoming more and more common place and marketing is then getting closer and closer to a point of being used in an acceptable way for the customers, which in turn are becoming much more difficult to target (Adams, 2011; Smilansky, 2009: 8).