What Does Blue Jell-O Have To Do With Marketing?

By Dana

Maybe, quite a bit.

Wisconsin-based liberal arts school Beloit College has taken its humanities and anthropology expertise into the realm of understanding its incoming freshman class for some 12 years now, producing an annual "Mindset List". Claiming it's not intended to make anyone feel old, they describe the list as "observations that help to identify the experiences that have shaped the lives—and formed the mindset—of students starting their post-secondary education this fall".

Think of it -- the class of 2013 never had the chance to see Freddy Mercury perform live. They've never used a card catalog to find a library book. The list offers up a full 75 items of this nature (shocking among them, the fact that the phrase "Green Giant" conjures up the image of Shrek rather than a vegetable logo), and #75 stopped me in my tracks:

There has always been blue Jell-O.

Now, I'm no purist, and meals at my house aren't generally gourmet. But if your first reaction (like mine) to blue Jell-O is something along the lines of "yuck", then maybe you need to rethink your customer's mindset. What have you changed about your marketing plan lately? How is your organization evolving in the 21st century?

If your company is primarily business-to-business rather than business-to-consumer, the class of 2013 won't be your customer for another few years, but they're well on the way. It's time to get prepared for them. Not only will they not remember Johnny Carson, but they will expect, even demand, things like online buying. Debit card purchases. Electronic rather than paper media. And it would be remiss of me not to point out that, for the class of 2013, there has always been advertising on hold.

Silence on hold is becoming more and more of an oddity, and my prediction is that audio, rather than print, is going to be the way we as businesses communicate our messages. Your telephones will talk, your website should talk, your brochure should be a DVD. Today, multimedia increases your chances of being remembered ... wait a few more years and it may be the only way you won't be ignored.