Targeted Marketing
I’ve always been a fan of listening to podcasts; they serve as the perfect complement to otherwise menial activities like walking to class, doing laundry, and a whole slew of other similar activities. These days one of my favorite podcasts is Planet Money from NPR. Even though I’m not a finance nut, Planet Money consistently delivers a captivating show every week. Most recently their episode was about targeted marketing, specifically Tom Burrell and his role in the world of marketing. Burrell started in the mail room of a big marketing firm in the 60’s. Notably, this was somewhat controversial at the time because he was African American. In spite of the adversity he faced, Burrell’s talent and innovation pulled him to the top of the marketing world. He went onto to co-found his own firm which today is know as Burrell Communications. Burrell and his firm gained notoriety by branding themselves as a firm with expertise in marketing to the African American community. While targeted marketing today may seem like the norm, in the 80’s this was a novel concept. Burrell leveraged his marketing talents to acquire some of the biggest names in American including none other than McDonalds.
By looking at the immense success that Burrell enjoyed in his career its clear that he knew his stuff. By catering ads to specifics demographics, they were far more captivating. In a Networks application, Burrell achieved success by relying on clusters. Instead of trying to market to the entire network, he took a specific sub group and made that his focus. Since the group is smaller it allows the content to be more relevant to that group. However, and possibly more importantly, the high level of interconnectedness in that group allows the marketed content to circulate and become cemented in that groups identity. Burrell extends this philosophy further to say the smaller the cluster, the better. This notion reaffirms the idea that it will have better circulation in the cluster.
If you’re interested in learning more I would definitely recommend checking out the podcast which inspire this post: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/planet-money/id290783428?mt=2&i=1000343479467