When I learned marketing (as the earth's crust was cooling) we were taught all about mass. Mass production, mass communications, mass markets, mass distribution.
The foundation for all this "mass"ive thinking came from developments early in the twentieth century. This thinking was neatly summed up in a book I'm reading (The Vertigo Years) about the early decades of that century:
A central paradox governed the relationship between the individual and his or her new power to choose in a consumer society: while mass production furthered not only membership of a tribe, but also personal, individual choice as an assertion of personal preference and taste, industry itself depended on looking at people not as individuals, but as types, as averages. For managers and product planners no individuals existed but only budgets, sizing charts, bell curves, fashions, markets. Marketing and advertising worked to close this gap. They associated perfectly anonymous products with faces, gave them a personal appearance, a little homely warmth.Mass production drove branding ... to create personalities and brand types that the "tribe" could identify with.
My how things have changed. The unthinkable is happening in the post-industrial world. Mass is no longer the fundamental driver that it was. Small is the new big. The customer of one is a possibility. We can communicate with ... and develop products for ... and distribute to ... individuals.
Marketers in the post industrial age need a post doctorate in this new marketing reality.
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