Love the Love
When I first heard about Geert Desager's experiment I wondered whether it would work. I liked the idea and I liked the title and I liked the passion behind the project, but I felt like I was still grasping for the through line ... for a story that I could sink my teeth into. I suppose it didn't help that the work was being done for Microsoft, raising my eyebrows and activating a strong in-built scepticism.
As a piece of technology marketing, this is a nice change of pace (plenty of lessons for other technology mass marketers). The story is framed as a breakup in the relationship between advertiser and consumer ... and by exposing the way that we, as marketers, aggregate, segment and analyse data, it is easy to see where the disconnects between brand and consumers lie. It also provides, by comparison, a clear reason as to why "social" marketing has has such a positive adoption across the consumer landscape.
Social marketing brings brands and consumers together in a relationship in a way that harkens back to the local-shop ethos. And as markets and marketing has evolved, the one-to-one relationships that once were possible have proven to be unsustainable. Geert's movie brings the nature of this relationship back into focus -- showing that where there once was love there is now only suspicion, impatience and scant regard. So will this effort bring back the love for Microsoft? Perhaps not straight away ... but at least we are talking ...
