Push to Pull: Increasing Brand Loyalty for Citizens of the Mobile Village

Artman, N.
49th Annual PCA/ACA Conference
April 2019, Washington, DC

Marshall McLuhan (1962) predicted a global, constantly connected, online/offline environment via electronic media, calling it the global village. Today, wireless infrastructures, mobile devices, and near constant connectivity facilitates an increasingly interconnected world. Language barriers aside, Internet users can now communicate instantaneously, e.g., email, chat, and instant message one another, regardless of geographical location, thus creating the Mobile village (Stiegler and Artman, 2017). Now, advertising existed well before this rise in mobile technology usage. However, mobile technologies have drastically expanded advertising options while allowing for more specific targeting tactics. According to Pew Research Center (2018), 95% of Americans have cell phones, and about a quarter of US adults claim they are ‘almost constantly’ online (Perrin and Jiang, 2018). Advertisers see this “always-on” behavior as an opportunity and use it to their advantage by interacting with consumers anytime, anywhere. Traditional push model marketing strategies have evolved into pull marketing, where instead of promoting a specific product to a specific audience, agencies are drawing consumers in by creating loyal customers and increasing their brand awareness. The more loyalty a customer feels towards a company, the more likely they are to buy their product. This presentation focuses on advertising’s shift towards pull marketing strategies and how the mobile village has directly impacted their delivery and consumption. Additionally, it seeks to highlight the changing landscape and provide ways to successfully navigate and adjust to the new dynamics of the mobile village.