Hybrid marketing

Hybrid Marketing stands for adding new dynamic formats to linear campaigns to generate real impact in an era where traditional marketing and advertising is losing its edge.
Linear campaigns refer here to classical advertising while dynamic formats are the new -more effective- marketing flavors that have appeared in the last 20 years: interactive, viral, ambient, PR ...

There is nowadays a controversy between advocates of the conspicuous "Advertising is Dead" claim and on the other side, the "hybrid marketers": those who apply every marcom that works today with efficiency, impact and credibility without necessarily renouncing to 20th-century marcom (also called: classical advertising) such as TV and print advertising.

There are 3 big names in the world of hybrid marketing:
:Jim Farley (Ford's vice president of Marketing)
:Simon Clift (chief marketing officer at Unilever, which features brands such as: Dove, Axe, Lynx…)
:Martin Cserba (chief executive officer of the international Hybrid Marketing agency holding 101 WORLDWIDE).

According to Hybrid marketing, advertising is still useful in some cases:

*Jump-start the Buzz: Often you'll need advertising to help encourage your talkers (buzz multiplicators) to start spreading the message. In other occasions though, advertising kills Word-of-Mouth: if the information is already out there for everyone to see, why bother spreading the buzz? Hotmail used ads in campus newspapers to create the initial users... after that the Buzz spread just because of the tag line at the bottom of each sent email.
*Make people ask your Talkers : A TV or print ad can also stimulate consumers to seek out more information from their WoM providers (i.e. your talkers).
*Reassure buyers: Advertising gives the consumer the facts they need in order to justify (ego-defensive function) her purchase decision.
*Correct the Buzz: WoM gets distorted as it travels through the networks (as in the old "telephone" game). Advertising gets the facts straight by broadcasting accurate information, thus shaping WoM at least partially.
*Advertising as Buzz: A good ad can generate WoM itself if people talk about it, as with the Energizer Bunny or every -really good- humorous ad. Other ads are specially crafted to mimic WoM, by using testimonials (experts or plain people out their opinion about the brand) in the hope that the audience will repeat these opinions.

Many companies turn to Hybrid marketing instead of just viral, interactive, ambient... because they sense that the right combination of these two marketing disciplines (classical marketing + new marketing) multiplies the effect of their marcom. Moreover, with Hybrid marketing they don't have to renounce to TV and print advertising.

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