User:Trey021/Sandbox

Marketing With Meaning
Marketing with Meaning is a concept based on the hypothesis that when people ignore or actively avoid advertising, the way for brands to gain their attention is to offer marketing they find valuable, to give them something they want or need. Advocates of Marketing with Meaning believe that traditional marketing has failed, as evidenced by the fact that although people are exposed to thousands of advertising messages a day, they find most of them interruptive and irritating, and do not engage with them. In light of this, proponents suggest that to be successful, marketing must offer people something useful and/or meaningful beyond a product or service.

Marketing with Meaning generally provides one of the following: • A solution to a problem • The ability to connect with others in a meaningful way • Entertainment • Help to achieve a personal goal • A way to improve life and better the world

Examples of Marketing with Meaning

• Abbott Nutrition offers a free service for diabetics called Diabetes Control for Life, including a website, email program, and tips for healthy living. • Kraft has developed an iPhone app called iFood Assistant that lets people browse recipes by ingredient, prep time, or meal type, as well as build shopping lists at Kraft.com. • Samsung sponsors and installs electrical charging stations for laptops and mobile devices inside airports. • Johnson & Johnson funded a database on children’s sleep that provides useful information to parents to help them get their children to sleep. • The American Express Members Project lets cardholders submit and vote on humanitarian ideas for AMEX to finance.

Each of these marketing efforts provides meaningful benefits to people.

Evolution of Relationship Marketing

Marketing with Meaning, attributed to Bob Gilbreath, Chief Marketing Strategist at Bridge Worldwide, is an evolution of relationship marketing and offers a slightly different take on permission marketing, as advocated by Seth Godin. It represents a move away from the historic “push” models of advertising, and aims to mitigate consumers' increasing dissatisfaction with “interruptive” marketing. Proponents of Marketing with Meaning believe the role of marketing and advertising must be to invite people to interact with the brand, rather than to impose the brand on them.

The Use of Digital Media

Marketing with Meaning often flourishes in the realm of digital media, including Internet marketing and wireless applications (such as those developed for the iPhone.) It may take advantage of Web 2.0 developments such as Web widgets, Google gadgets, social-networking sites, video sharing sites, blogs, and folksonomies.