Interactivity: Quid pro quo?

I think that interactivity as a method of marketing is going to be very important, if not the pinnacle of many marketing campaigns, that will run alongside and become entwined within traditional methods of advertising.

To many, this is wonderful. However for me, as a future advertising practitioner, someone who grew up enthralled with television advertisements and the cinematography of adverts such as the one seen below, this movement isn’t as appreciated as it is to others, or as appreciated as it should be.

The battle that brands have to undergo in order to reach a consumer is extensive, due to the fact that we are “exposed to about 3000 advertising messages a day" (Truthmove). So without brands providing that little bit extra ‘give’ (interactivity), many brands will begin to fall by the wayside.

• Pubs and clubs are interacting with people via social networks, from local pubs, such as my own, the Halfway Inn, via Facebook, to major nightclubs such as OrangeRooms on Twitter.
• Yahoo! have created interactivity via Yahoo! Games.
• Zappos, the online footwear retailer has a website with a home page that has over 214 interactive links and buttons allowing consumers to interact with Zappos on a very basic level.
• Bestbuy suggest further interaction that can take place, looking at 4G technology. As they put it: From iPod to Tripod – (“Find and share the latest news & opinion, tech tips, videos, links, questions and ideas with the community”).

However interactivity isn’t all positive. Some brands are falling into the trap of ‘toolkit myopia’ and others are doing nothing, some proactive some reactive, and some using P2P and others P2M.This brings me latently to the title of this particular blog. Interactivity: Quid pro quo?

Many organisations have failed to keep up with the times and/or have failed to understand the necessity of interactivity in its various formats all of which are accompanied by their own individual integrated complexities that change from brand to brand.

The online Advertising Market place has gone past the dot.com stage and is now a platform that “encompasses all of the media before it and it stirs the pot to the boiling point with a large dose of interactivity” (Sherman, Nettime).

From Mail, Telephone, Mobile telephone, Internet, Computer games, Interactive TV and Personal Digital Assistants, to decipher what is right for your company or brand, and what is wrong in relation to interactivity, are all currently million dollar questions.

It could be proposed that there isn’t a lot one could do in this situation. Consumers are using the interactive element of the digital age, allowing them to ensure that products are being produced in the way that the consumers want and organisations are listening. If they aren’t the company and/or brand will ‘feel the wrath’ of the consumer i.e. EthicalConsumers has a "boycott list is widely regarded as the most comprehensive English-language list of progressive boycotts". This follows the online communication theory of Social Constructionsism, spoken about by Greenhill & Fletcher, Griffith University in: The Social Construction of Electronic Space.

So interactivity can be used to befriend the consumer, retain the interest of a consumer, entertain the consumer and inform the consumer. For example scanning QR codes in order to receive offers and location based promotions.

However not all consumers want to be interacted with constantly. This has created a need; which is to ensure that consumers are not advertised to all of the time whilst using the digital marketplace.

So in comes programs such as Adblock plus and Firefox plug-in, preventing omnipotent access to us as consumers. These types of programs defeat the purpose of certain online advertisements and wastes a lot of companies money which. With digital interactivity and technology allowing for international catastrophes such as ‘Bert is Evil’, which are inevitable considering the participatory culture of the digital world, the interactive digital marketplace is yet to be clear-cut, however is definitely the way the entire world is moving.

So whether interactivity is Quid pro quo? or not is relative! Don’t you think?