"Traditional Marketing" Gone Forever?

I think not. I'm pretty sure I'm not the only person who's ever thought so, either. Hell, I'm probably late to jump on the bandwagon as it is.

The world we live in is to cyclical for traditional, or older style marketing to disappear. Clothing styles go in and out with astonishing regularity, and tend to circle back on a generational term. Music does the same thing. Look at the ska, swing, and psychedelic periods that the music industry went through. Popularity comes and goes, and yet there are things that are always there. Good old standbys, if you want to think of them that way. Jeans and tshirts. Manufactured pop music. Even the movie and television industry falls into cycles on occasion.

Why would marketing and advertising be any different? Word of mouth, viral marketing, and banner advertisements are great, and have many plenty of people tons of money...but so have traditional advertising means. There was a point in time as all of this next generation stuff was coming along, that Yahoo! was running television commercials. They aren't anymore. Yeah, probably because everyone who uses the internet knows what Yahoo! is. Now people are all excited about Google. With good reason, of course, because Google is growing into a category and an industry all to its own. I can't for the life of me remember a tv commercial or a magazine ad, or any kind of other "traditional" advertisement for Google. Or Blogger. Or Twitter. Or MySpace. Facebook. Sure, they got written up in technology magazines or computer magazine or stuff like that...and it probably did them a world of good. But abandoning what was once traditional advertising is a bad idea.

Why? Because sooner or later, the cycle will come around again, and for some it will be too late. Maybe they just sunk a ton into whatever newfangled promotional thing that just came down the pike, and they have nothing left for print or television. Maybe they just didn't think the cycle would come around again.

I've yet to see a company that does more than a slightly passable job (if they even attempt it) at balancing new and traditional marketing and advertising concepts. At least not to the point where it's all that noticeable. Is it being done? I hope so, but I'm not really sure. Will it be done? That's for time to show.

Thanks for reading.