We have gone from mass media to one-on-one marketing. And it only took 60 years. In the 1950s, mass media such as television dominated the advertising scene. If product companies wanted to reach large audiences, they had to create commercials for TV and place them on popular shows. The I Love Lucy show, for example, reached a mass TV audience that has never been equaled since. In 1952, there were over 17 million televisions sets in US homes and I Love Lucy had an audience of 45 million viewers. Almost everyone who had a television set was watching I Love Lucy every week.

WMMS was the premiere rock radio station in the late seventies in Cleveland, Ohio. Their brand of rock didn’t include Barry Manilow or Anne Murry. No, WMMS, blasted Bruce Springsteen, Led Zeppelin and Kiss. All day and all night. Needless to say, WMMS and their mascot, the buzzard, was very popular on the campus of Kent State University.

In the Fall of 1975, as a freshman, a friend and I were walking the campus after class around 5:30 pm. It was a Friday and the end of our first week of classes. We noticed a lot of students opening windows in their dorm rooms. Soon they put speakers (facing outside) connected to their stereos on the ledge. The stereos were all tuned to WMMS with the volume on high. The sound was coming from almost every dorm all across the campus.

I hadn’t heard of WMMS before because I wasn’t from the area. I didn’t know that around 6:00 pm every Friday, a DJ named Murry Saul, would come on the air and begin a synopsis about celebrating the weekend. At the end of his rant, he would close with a few words of encouragement, the music would cue up, and the weekend was official. You could hear the campus roar with approval. The live audio version is listed above.

The process of branding begins with setting a goal; knowing who your target audience is; creating a strong message; and finally communicating that message consistently to your target audience. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that ‘Gotta Get Down!’ is the best example of branding. But, in the late seventies, WMMS was the only radio station that we listened to.

Just how fast does news travel these days. Pretty darn fast if you ask me. If you haven’t heard already, a remarkable television event happened recently. Susan Boyle, an unknown Scottish citizen became internationally famous in the blink of an eye.  She dreamed of becoming a professional singer, and entered a contest on the TV show; Britain’s Got Talent. Similar to America’s Got Talent, contestants vie for prize money by singing, dancing and displaying wide variety of entertainment.

Within 1 week the video (shown above) on YouTube had over 24 million views. Hundreds of blogs and major news media covered the event. When she walked on stage you could here the crowd laughing. But, I’ll let the video link above tell the rest of the story. She is living proof that you can do anything that you sent your mind to. She is also proof of the power and speed of the Internet.

Hyundai commercial for Super Bowl XLIII.

GoDaddy.com Commercial for Super Bowl XLIII.

Wigix commercial for Super Bowl XLIII.