The dirty 30s and advertising your way through 2011+

Back in April 2008, Russell Johnston wrote a great article on "Marketing". The article - Opportunity Knocks - tells a great story about the horrors of the Great Depression, and the actions of advertisers.

At its worst point, in 1933, more than one in four Canadians was out of work and the average farm income dropped to less than half its peak from the 1920s.

... radio experienced phenomenal growth despite the hard economic times. From 1928 to 1933-the year before the crash to the depth of the Depression-the number of licensed sets in Canada almost tripled to 763,000. ... the actual number of sets might have been closer to one million ... Radio offered one winning advantage during the depression: once a set was purchased, the programs were free. If you could build a crystal radio, the sets themselves were free.

... the trick of radio advertising lay not in the medium itself but in the careful pairing of product with program.

Fast forward a few years (okay about 80 years), and here we are with more new media in our hands.  The web is getting old, and it is being quickly eclipsed by the small-screen  (a.k.a. the third screen) mobile browsing.  Is this the radio of our generation?  It's a great place to be (and generally pretty cheap) in this economic time.  There is also plenty of opportunity to pair with a product with a "program" - also known as an "app".

Lesson #2 from the Great Depression - Look for opportunities and be relevant.