The American TV series, ‘Mad Men’ is not only a fascinating sociological study of the world of ‘free love’ and political incorrectness of the 1960s (can you believe how everybody smokes all of the time, and how the women in the programme are seen to fulfil only supportive roles), but it also provides a fascinating historical perspective of the evolution of marketing over the last 50 or so years.
The 60s marked the emergence of the “Era of Mass Marketing” facilitated by the arrival of supermarkets and mass media which meant that a manufacturer needed to communicate with the consumer in order to attract them to his product. Advertising provided the most potent form of connection and given that the majority of the products were relatively new, it was sufficient to go out with a simple demonstration of how the product worked, plus just a hint of the benefit to the user.
In a very short period of time the number of similar products began to make differentiation critical. In some cases this could be achieved by design and innovation, but in many cases the products performed similarly and it was up to the marketers to find a way to differentiate them. Enter Al Ries and Jack Trout with their definitive book, “Positioning the Battle for Your Mind”, which even today remains a classic text-book on the importance of ‘owning a space or a gap in the mind of the consumer’.
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