Dive Brief:
- The PR Council surveyed 56 members of the Association of National Advertisers asking them what they considered the most overhyped recent marketing initiatives.
- About half cited real-time efforts as the number one or two overhyped topic. Next on the list was native advertising at 36% and social media at 34%.
- Meanwhile, the initiative rated as most important was “truly integrated marketing” at 77%.
Dive Insight:
The survey by the PR Council asked the very limited sampling of marketers to rank a group of recent industry initiatives including social media, mobile, real-time efforts, big data and analytics, content marketing, and truly integrated marketing.
The multi-channel approach of integrated marketing took the top spot as most important with 77% of respondents listed it as first or second. On the other end of the spectrum, real-time marketing was cited by around 50% of those surveyed the most overhyped initiative listing it either first or second in that dubious category. Real-time marketing has seemingly soured for marketers having to constantly churn out social media posts, which as the Wall Street Journal notes, became "an advertising fascination after Oreo’s watershed tweet during the Super Bowl blackout."
Content marketing was only cited by 26% as one of the top two overhyped initiatives, and the report on the research speculated that the language and choices presented to surveyed marketers might have made a difference if most viewed real-time marketing as a tactic within content marketing overall. Other top overhyped initiatives according to the research are native advertising and social media marketing.