Despite the bad rap advertisers often get, marketing has always been about connection. But the way brands connect with people? That’s evolved—radically.
Over the last seventy-odd years, marketing has transformed from mass communication to deeply personal, real-time engagement. What once relied on gut instinct and glossy ads is now powered by mountains of customer signals and cutting-edge AI.
We’ve moved from megaphone-esque announcements to responding in the moment—but not every brand has made the leap.
Here’s a brief walk down memory lane to explain how we got here, and where the most innovative marketers are headed next.
The Broadcast Era (1950s-1970s)
The broadcast marketing era was defined by traditional advertising on the mediums of mass communication available post-World War II: television commercials, radio jingles, and newspaper spreads dominated the cultural conversation.
This was the age of achieving brand awareness through massive reach. As fictionalized by shows like Mad Men, broadcast marketing campaigns were built on big and bold ideas, often with little more than intuition and experience to guide them.
“In the early 1950s, advertisers were spending about $85 million on TV advertising, but within a few years, less than a decade, that figure was over $1 billion.” (Media Culture)
Memorable ads, such as Volkswagen’s “Think Small” campaign in 1959, flipped the script, and brands became household names through sheer repetition across mass media.
A big idea packed into a tiny car. Source: Wikipedia
Success for creative-driven marketing involved memorable slogans and catchy tunes that captured share of voice, but every consumer received the same message. Audiences were only segmented at a surface level, such as geographic region, but minimal data was accessible to hone hunches.
- The contribution: Marketing was loud, proud, and impossible to ignore.
- The challenge: Personalization was nonexistent, and without data to validate decisions, campaigns were a huge gamble.
The Direct Mail and Database Era (1980s-1990s)
As technology evolved, so did the marketer’s toolkit. In the ‘80s and ‘90s, the focus shifted from mass broadcasting to something that felt a little more personal: direct marketing.
Coined in 1967 by Lester Wunderman, who was behind the creation of the toll-free 1-800 number, early direct marketing involved communicating directly with customers and offering a method of response, primarily via direct mail and telemarketing.
“By the close of the 1990s, Standard Mail hit 100 billion pieces. As importantly, direct mail’s slice of the advertising market topped 19% in that decade.” (DMN)
The emergence of CRM systems in this era helped marketers organize and segment customers in new ways. Mailboxes filled with catalogs, credit card offers, and hand-addressed envelopes, all targeted using increasingly sophisticated customer databases.
For instance, Millennials in the U.S. will remember the nostalgia of the Toys ‘R’ Us “Big Toy Book.”
The holidays never felt this good. Source: Retro Junk
Coupon-driven promotions provided more measurable response rates, but the experience was still a blunt instrument. Brands began thinking about “target markets,” but segmentation was still one-size-fits-many.
- The contribution: Marketing became a bidirectional conversation with direct response.
- The challenge: With siloed data and inefficient tools, personalization was still clunky and time-intensive.
The Digital Boom and Email Marketing Era (Late 1990s-2000s)
The mainstream adoption of the internet and the dot-com boom changed marketing forever. Suddenly, brands had access to digital channels that allowed them to not only engage with audiences directly but also measure every click.
Websites, search engines, and e-commerce platforms exploded in popularity in the late 1990s, and social media entered the chat, as netizens say, in the 2000s. But no channel was more dominant for marketers than email.
In 1998, the term “spam” entered the New Oxford Dictionary of English with its definition: “irrelevant or inappropriate messages sent on the Internet to a large number of newsgroups or users.” (CNET)
Brands leaned heavily on email for everything from product launches to holiday sales. With automation tools on the rise, marketers could reach millions of customers with minimal cost and effort—depending on the inbox provider.
Outlook was launched in 1997 and has been plaguing email marketers ever since. Source: Medium
Campaign calendars became gospel. Teams meticulously planned every send, often months in advance. However, despite its massive reach, emails were still sent en masse, regardless of a customer’s behavior or preferences.
- The contribution: Email became the workhorse of digital marketing.
- The challenge: The tech was powerful, but the strategy hadn’t caught up. Marketers were still in batch-and-blast mode, sending out waves of content with limited relevance.
The Campaign Era Peaks (2010s-Early 2020s)
By the 2010s, the marketing landscape had become more complex—and more capable. Advanced solutions (like Iterable, which was founded in 2013) enabled more sophisticated automation and personalization, allowing brands to reach customers through a variety of channels, including email, SMS, mobile apps, and social media.
Social media especially became top priority for marketers in the 2010s, as platforms like Instagram, Pinterest, and Snapchat were launched, and companies like Facebook and Twitter went public. These apps allowed marketers to understand their audiences on a massive scale like never before.
And yet, even with better tech, marketing strategy and messages remained largely static. Campaigns got smarter, but most companies still operated in batch-and-blast mode, scheduling messages on fixed timelines and pushing to predefined segments.
“In 2014, 66% of marketers reported that enhanced targeting and personalization were top benefits of marketing automation” (Ironpaper)
For most businesses that did not adopt modern martech, personalization existed, but it wasn’t responsive or real-time. Consumers could receive communications on multiple channels, but the messages were rarely orchestrated together, and they still arrived on the brand’s timeline—not the customer’s.
In the 2010s, social media platforms like Instagram got major makeovers. Source: 1000 Logos
- The contribution: Multichannel marketing became commonplace, although most channels ran on parallel tracks rather than true cross-channel orchestration.
- The challenge: Despite more advanced technology, marketers were still unable to look beyond the campaign calendar and move at the pace of their customers.
The Moments-Based Marketing Era (Now)
Finally, we have now entered the era of moments-based marketing, where customers expect brands to engage in real-time—not wait for next week’s newsletter.
AI-powered tools make it possible to truly personalize every interaction. Now marketers can abandon their campaign calendars and instead focus on triggering messages based on continuous, customer-led moments.
“Triggered customer journeys drive 3x more revenue than one-size-fits-all sends” (DMA)
Moments-based marketing is what enables leading travel site Secret Escapes to personalize all its customer communications. By using Iterable’s data feeds and AI-powered intelligence, the Secret Escapes team can now send deals to each of their 62 million customers based on their individual search history.
These dynamic, timely ‘Search Emails’ greatly exceed industry average performance, with a 45% open rate and 8.3% click-through rate. Secret Escapes can now foster better connections with customers and build long-term brand value.
Secret Escapes seizes the moment by personalizing messages based on customers’ browsing behavior. Source: Iterable
- The impact: Data is unified, channels are orchestrated, and content is adapted dynamically. This is marketing that moves at the speed of customers—delivering the right message, in the right moment, every time.
Ready to Meet the Moment?
Marketing isn’t what it used to be—and at Iterable, we find that incredibly exciting. We’re leading the charge on helping brands step into the new era of marketing, where engagement is intelligent, relevant, and one-to-one.
The campaign era is over. Let’s build something better. Contact Iterable today.
