Marketing and Advertising: The Wave Of The Past, Present, and Future

Marketing and advertising have always been a constant in the business world, and today more than ever it can be seen everywhere you look; on television, on the internet, on billboards, in newspapers and magazines, and also heard on the radio. While searching the web this past week, I found a number of unmatched resources that I decided to include in my linkroll because of the significance they portray in my field of marketing and advertising. During my exploration of the web, I discovered nine sites that convey first-rate content, structure and navigation, visual design, functionality, interactivity, and authority. Their overall experience is also unparalleled, which helps them pass the Webby Awards grade of criteria. In addition, the one blog I came across passes the IMSA criteria, and it offers opinions, commentary, and news that is substantial in the world of marketing. This blog, entitled the Marketing Profs Daily Fix, involves a number of contributors and marketing professionals, which I believe is its primary strength because it helps limit its biases. It is also a leading blog in the marketing community, and it informs readers of hot topics in the area and shares a variety of information on the marketing profession itself. However, this blog does have a weakness, which I believe is the lack of effective visuals to support the topics of its posts.

The nine websites that I encountered allow deep exploration into the fields of marketing and advertising. These organizations are trade associations which pride themselves on offering its members a wide array of resources, services, expertise, certifications, and programs regarding the marketing and advertising agency business. Five of these organizations deal primarily with advertising. They are comprised of the American Association of Advertising Agencies, the American Advertising Federation, the Interactive Advertising Bureau, the International Advertising Association, and the Association of National Advertisers. Three of these organizations, the AAAA, AAF, and IAA, have an established history and are known as being premier leaders in the advertising industry, which gives them a huge advantage over their competition and I believe is their main strength. The key positive of IAB is that it primarily promotes interactive and online advertising for agencies, which is significant in this era dominated by the internet. The main strength of ANA is that its membership is attractive for both larger businesses and smaller companies. Throughout my evaluation of these five organizations, I found some possible weaknesses that can be developed further. Roughly sixty percent of AAAA's members generate revenue of less than $10 million per year, which is a huge disadvantge compared to its competition. I feel that the AAF is the best organization of the bunch, but they do not hold enough advertising events throughout the year to appeal to the younger audience (i.e. college students). The IAA also does not hold enough events or programs, which makes it difficult to spread the benefits of their membership. The IAB is a fairly new organization, which may persuade some potential members to sign up with a more experienced one. Lastly, the ANA only deals with corporate, not individual businesses, so their potential to grow is only delayed by their own obduracy.

The other four organizations I came across deal with marketing as a whole. These include the Direct Marketing Association, the eMarketing Association, the Business Marketing Association, and the Promotion Marketing Association. The primary strength of the DMA is that it contains the majority of Fortune 100 companies as its members and is an international leader with members in forty-six countries. The eMA is also an international leader with over forty nations being represented by them, and their primary strength is that it is the world's largest international association of emarketing professionals. The positives of the BMA and the PMA are they also have an established history, which makes them premier powers in the world of marketing. Even though these organizations have many strengths, there are some weaknesses that I feel can be improved upon. The DMA primarily holds conferences and events on the East Coast of the United States, which may make it hard for some business owners to attend. The eMA requires users to be paid members to access some of its online resources, which may discourage some browsers from inquiring about their organization. The primary weakness of the BMA is that it strictly focuses on business-to-business marketing as opposed to branching out to business-to-consumer marketing. I found that the lack of events and conferences held by PMA is their primary weakness, but other than that, it seems like they are resourceful and generate plenty of business. Throughout my analysis and evaluation of each of these organizations, I realized that there is a lot more to marketing than just coming up with a slogan or packaging a good or creating an ad. I learned that there are professionals willing and able to help, multitudes of classes and workshops, and an ample amount of resources available in the realm of marketing.