The Age of Self Love & New Rules of Marketing

We are living in an Age of Self fueled by a culture of narcissism and addiction to constant commentary, craving for an ounce of self-esteem to boost our identity.  How can marketers tap this paradigm shift to stay ahead of the curve and outsmart competition?

Did you know what’s the Word of the Year that just passed by, in 2013? 

For those who guessed it wrong, it is ‘selfie’ – snapping a photograph that one has taken of oneself, with a smartphone or tab, and posted on to a social media channel. The Oxford Dictionary Online has rated “selfie” as its Word of the Year owing to soaring popularity.

You may like to hate it, but we are increasingly drawn deeper into the age of self-love. And, you can’t just put the blame on the Gen Y for driving this. The signs of narcissism are all around, as the world gets flooded with the tsunami of social media. The narrative is simple, it’s all about me and myself, and how we derive pleasure by portray us as the best, oblivious to the world, except for the “likes’ of “fans” that one begets.

Certainly, this is the Age of Self fuelled by a culture of narcissism and addiction to constant commentary, craving for an ounce of self-esteem to boost our identity.  Eulogizing the self has become the currency of our time. It is all about us all of the time. And, it is the celebration of self. 

Weird it may appear, when we think about it: we're all a little desperate for Likes these days, knowingly or by default as we consume social media. The measure of self-esteem has a commodity and reduced to “ever young, ever smiling photos, status updates and number of like, page views or impressions one earns."

Significantly, social media has become a powerful tool of self-reflection and serves as the balm for the identity crisis one faces. The types of actions social media users take and the kinds of information they are adding to their Facebook walls and profiles are a reflection of their identities, their aspirations - their deep rooted desires is to look the best, and judged the best – even though virtually.

Interestingly, people with lower self-esteem tend to be much more concerned with what others post about them on Facebook, while users with higher self-esteem spend more effort on adding information to their personal profiles on the social network.

This pattern has reached critical mass in a society that worships celebrity and has handy tools to amplify everything, from the ordinary to the inane. It is all about self-advertisement. On Facebook, Instagram, Flickr and Twitter, we often shout: “Look at me! See how pretty I look? How great I am?”

What does this mean for marketers? Big Data and predictive analytics can offer a range of targeted advertising by the content one shares, the interest s/he shows, information one provides at registration or adds to the account or timeline,

Things that you share and do on social media platforms, such as what you like, and your interactions with advertisements, partners, or apps, keywords from your stories, and your usage patterns have become a powerful arsenal for forward thinking marketers.

Chief marketing officers can serve powerful persuasive ads by location, demographics, likes, keywords, categories, networks, and any other personal information inferred from the users of social media. In short, it’s like reading the hearts and minds of the users, analogical to doing an ECG Scan of heart or neuroimaging of brain to unearth a goldmine of actionable insights.

Indeed, this is a paradigm shift as new business models will emerge based on personalization tapping “earned data” from the consumers to a value network, luring same consumer to buy more things from the same brand. In times ahead, integration of physical products with digital services will be the key to success as marketing will be built in to the product and services itself.

Devices that collect data and share them through digital services will transform everyday life as well as the entire marketing industry. This will equip the marketers to become trusted partners to their consumers in everything from finance, to health, to clothes they wear, what make-up they should use.

The Big Data Insights thus captured will be increasingly used this to inform everything from new product development to one-to-one marketing approaches that deliver relevant, actionable messages to consumers, driving sustained growth for a smarter planet.

Are we ready to meet challenge, and tap the limitless opportunities?

The Blogger is Kiran Kumar Yellupula:  The views expressed here are purely personal. Please share your feedback at mediavalue@yahoo.com