There is a shift in Marketing toward behavioral marketing that shuns classic marketing approaches and embraces ‘newer’ forms of research (all fundamental to the practices of Experience Design).  A great newsletter/blog that deeply covers this phenomenon is Behavioral Insider.

Today’s post was particularly relevant in that it:

• Calls out specific shifts in marketing, many of which have very 2.0 implications
• Highlights a business model that taps into the behaviors/preferences of a very specific youth market.
• Tells a more compelling story by comparing and contrasting ‘differences’

Supporting quotes — pay particular attention to the last two:

Behavioral targeting has widely succeeded in changing the rhetoric and terminology of marketers. Rare indeed is the self-respecting behavioral advertiser who doesn’t speak in terms of having a one-to-one dialogue with customers. Yet, as Ryan Okum, president of StreetWise Concepts and Culture, explains below, moving beyond the habits of the older impressions-based marketing paradigm requires more than talk. It demands the cultivation of a new skill set.

Okum: Our focus is on online conversations and community building. We’re working with clients who are moving away from, or at least re-thinking, the ideas that behavioral targeting is strictly about serving advertising….The goal is to build a two-way environment where consumers actually go to participate.

Okum: The difference between our behavioral approach and more conventional approaches is, there’s a much more transparent execution in what we do. It’s not, as behaviorally targeting impressions is, a ‘two-way mirror’ where the marketer just looks in and eavesdrops on where consumers go online. We use analytics tools, yes, but to focus in on not just where they go, but what they do.

Okum: What marketers are shifting toward is that promotion is fundamentally more about creating conversations than reaching impressions.

Okum: [The digital channel] takes [a] philosophical as well as tactical shift. There’s a huge difference between accepting and living inside the paradigm where audiences and consumers are passive impressions to be reached with your message, and the new, conversational paradigm. The new philosophy is, you listen to the target market and give them what they want rather than making guesses about their interests and serving them up impression-based ads.