There’s a good reason why Oster and Associates adopted the slogan “Evolve” a number of years ago. The world has changed considerably since our founding in 1986, and without a lot of evolution on our part as well as what we do on behalf of our clients, we would be part of that lost generation of enterprises that would only potentially be remembered by the historians who want to teach the History of Advertising 101!
While technology promised years ago to simplify our lives, it has done more to morph our industry than just make it easier. It has given us capabilities that we would have never dreamed possible, and it has allowed us the ability to reach well defined target markets that were not even defined 30 years ago.
This will all make more sense with an example. In 1986, your advertising choices included such options as radio, television, newspapers, magazines, billboards and direct mail. Of those choices, all options except direct mail were mass media that allowed the advertiser to target extended communities, and often certain age groups or psychographic groups based on programming or editorial content. Direct mail was the only choice an organization had to reach out to specific neighborhoods or interest groups.
Fast forward to 2016. Those 30 years mean that we have exactly the same choices for marketing we had in 1986, but we also have so many more. And that’s what is exciting about celebrating 30 years in our industry. We can talk to our clients about highly fine-tuned potential customers and client groups, and we can reach them at any time of the day or night, at our choosing, with a variety of messages directed specifically to the things that will be of most interest to each recipient. We can take a budget that used to be at least half wasted and talk to more people who are willing and able to buy. We aren’t required to address a larger audience with no interest or discretionary dollars to spend if that isn’t a part of our strategy.
Where do we spend our time and money today? We believe in mass media for some situations, and we find radio and television to be highly effective. But we also put our budgets into public relations, where much of our communication is highly influenced by the technology of emails, social media and digital programming. And we focus strong efforts on advertising through websites, mobile apps, online media and programmatic buying to reach only those people who are most important to our clients’ efforts.
We’ve evolved! Join us in the evolution of Oster and the world of marketing!
-Bev
