NYC's Naked Cowboy
Unfinished thought:
Television advertising is a concert. Every TV spot is a performance seen synchronously by thousands or millions at a time. Marketers love putting on that show. Each and every time. It’s sexy. People remember it. But they leave.
Marketing within social media is street performance. Street performers perform for the same number of people as concerts do. It’s just asynchronous: they reach thousands or millions, too, but not at the same time. It’s not as sexy for an advertiser, nor does it have as much immediate impact on those large numbers of people, in aggregate. But people interact with those performers over time. They gather in crowds. The performers gradually learn how to work within and make the most of their environments. The crowds take pictures. Stories are shared. The performers become fixtures. They get discovered. It’s serendipitous, and it can be wonderful. And when you’re really committed, they become legend. Naked Cowboy-style.
Both deserve a proper (significant) investment. But I’d rather have the stuff of legend (legends are stories that grow), than the one-off memory that fades. If you can make them work together, you have a media empire, and can tell the story of how it was the people, your audience, your customers that made it all possible — versus just your ad spend.
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