Traditional
advertising for products – magazine ads and TV commercials – may go the
way of the rotary phone, one researcher predicts. Seethu Seetharaman of
Washington University in St. Louis said viral Internet campaigns,
crowdsourcing, product placements and guerrilla promotions will dominate
the marketing and advertising landscape. Product placements – branded
goods or services placed in a context usually devoid of ads, such as
movies, music videos, TV or news programs will continue to gain
popularity, Seetharaman said. “I think crowdsourcing is only going to
increase,” he added. Crowdsourcing refers to the open innovation model,
pioneered by sites such as Threadless.com, where customers design and
vote on new product designs. Given the popularity of campaigns such as
the T-Mobile Flash Mob, one is more likely to see non-traditional
“grassroots” campaigns get more noticed than traditional billboard
advertising. “With the explosion of smartphones, these grassroots
campaigns are swiftly recorded by people and then posted on YouTube in
short order, which then makes these guerrilla campaigns go viral in a
big way,” Seetharaman said. “This ‘guerrilla promotion’ style of
advertising will blossom in 2012 and beyond.”