Remember this day…

While it likely won’t go down in any history books of authority, and many will laugh at even the thought of it, today something monumental happened. MTV has canceled it’s long running program Total Request Live, better known as TRL.

Immediately, you ask “why is this important?” TRL represented the height of late 90s “old media promotion strategy” where a hip, youth-oriented program is created and quickly deployed to reach critical viewer mass. That program is then exploited by any major entertainment player to promote their latest release, and kids flock to the store or theater that week to buy it. Advertisers fill in the gaps by pumping their teen products into the commercial breaks and PRESTO!…everyone makes money. It was all too easy…so much so that copycat programs popped up everywhere, stealing the same format and production values.

Every entertainment “big shot” took those millions of young eyeballs for granted – assumed they would always be there, all focused on the same singular promotional vehicle. No longer.

As we mark the fall of the last remnant of this once mighty strategy, it is truly fascinating to consider how much has changed. The 12-25 demographic has since become a group forged in the fires of abundant choice and daily technological evolutions. Instead of “one network to rule them all,” they are “all with networks from which to rule.” In order to market to this group, you have to go to them. They will not come to you. Let me repeat that, they will NOT COME TO YOU. There isn’t a network sticky enough to re-acquire the ratings TRL once boasted. However, should you reach them, there’s little guarantee your message will even matter. Simply being “mainstream” or “#1 on the charts” or a “fresh new brand” doesn’t have the pull it once had.

This is the business world we now live in, and as today’s teens become tomorrow’s baby boomer – their consumer habits WON’T go away. Brand strategists and marketers HAVE to pick up their game in order to compete. This means having a profile on every social network in existence, ceating campaigns that are experiences – not messages, and conducting focus groups on a weekly basis to see what kids find important and interesting. It means actively using the sames tools they use, to understand their world through THEIR eyes. Armed with this information you stand a fighting chance.

So celebrate the fall of TRL, but take a moment to truly appreciate what has taken its place. The world is now a LOT more complicated.