The ‘funnel’ is dying
The marketing funnel as we know it is fast becoming obsolete. Especially when it comes to winning the love of conscious, sustainable audiences.
We are now clearly in a ‘values-first’ era of business. Which means this entire global shift towards sustainability, equality, openness, privacy, earth-friendliness, body-positivity etc. is not driven by brands but audiences.
And it’s not just a small segment of niche audiences. It is very much the mainstream. Global majors like Nestle have clearly admitted this and responding to this.
The Funnel’s fundamental assumption is this…if a brand drives awareness (through paid media mostly - as brilliantly illustrated by the ever funny Tom Fishburne here) then it can generate enough interest for the audiences to jump in ‘their’ funnel. It is a ‘Brand-out’ proposition that expects audiences to toe their line.
Contrast this with what is actually happening on the ground.
Audiences are DEMANDING values-alignment from the brands and increasingly choosing the ones that respond and prove that they are indeed in values-aligned.
It would be wise to pivot towards a more audience-first approach to driving marketing.
So instead of still holding on to an 1898 - level thinking of Awareness-Interest-Desire-Action (yeah…the funnel is older than the modern internal combustion engine…thank you Elmo Lewis) and building multi-million dollar marketing funnels, the smartest, frontier brands are better served to think something along the lines of Respond-Prove-Engage-Delight.
Brands need to start thinking ‘Audience-in’ to win the new marketplace. It’s time brands learn how to dance the new ‘values-first’ tango.
