What past technology revolutions teach us about marketing today
By Philip TsangStrategy3 min read
Every generation of marketers believes it is living through unprecedented change. They are usually right, and the lessons of the previous revolution usually still apply.
Generative AI is the biggest shift in how people find information since the smartphone, and arguably since the web itself. Before predicting where it goes, it is worth looking at what happened the last few times a new technology rewired how people discover and choose businesses.
The printing press: when distribution gets cheap, clarity wins
Gutenberg’s press, developed in the mid-1400s, made printed material cheap for the first time. Advertising followed quickly. William Caxton, who brought printing to England, printed a small notice around 1477 advertising a book for sale. It is often cited as one of the first printed advertisements in English.
Once anyone could print, the scarce resource stopped being paper and became attention. The notices that worked were short, specific and easy to act on: what it is, where to get it, why it is worth it.
The lesson: when a technology makes content cheap to produce, the value moves to clarity and credibility. Generative AI is doing exactly this to written content today.
Radio and television: the first versions copied the old medium
The first paid radio commercial aired in 1922 on WEAF in New York: about ten minutes of talk promoting apartments in Queens. The first television commercial followed in 1941, a short spot for Bulova watches before a baseball game.
Early television advertising often looked like radio with a camera pointed at it: an announcer reading a script. The brands that won on television were the ones that learned to use the new medium, to show rather than tell.
The lesson: the first instinct is always to port the old format into the new channel. Pages stuffed with keywords for 2010-era Google are the radio scripts of AI search. They won’t be what AI tools choose to quote.
The Yellow Pages: incumbency doesn’t transfer
For most of the twentieth century, the Yellow Pages was where people looked for a plumber, an accountant or, where the rules allowed it, a lawyer. Firms competed on the size of their ad and their place in the alphabet, which is why so many businesses were named “AAA” something.
When Google launched AdWords in 2000, and organic search matured alongside it, the logic flipped. The biggest ad in the directory no longer guaranteed the most calls. The most relevant answer did. Many businesses that dominated the phone book were slow to notice, and newer competitors took their place online.
The lesson: leading the old channel does not guarantee you will lead the new one. A firm that ranks first on Google today is not automatically the firm an AI assistant recommends tomorrow.
The web and the smartphone: steady early movers compound
The first clickable banner ad ran in 1994, and its click-through rate is still quoted with envy. Firms that built useful websites early, and then rebuilt them for phones after the iPhone arrived in 2007, accumulated advantages that compounded for years: links, reviews, content and search history that late arrivals struggled to match.
We have seen this first-hand. Since 2004, the clients who invested steadily in their websites and search presence, rather than in bursts, are the ones who consistently rank and convert today.
The lesson: the payoff from a new medium goes to the businesses that start early and keep going, not to the ones that make one big move and stop.
What this means for marketing in the age of AI
Put the lessons together and a few things become clear about the shift we are living through now.
- Content is cheap again, so generic content is worthless. Expertise, specific facts and a clear point of view are what stand out.
- Don’t port old formats. Write for people who want direct answers, and for machines that need to understand who you are.
- Today’s rankings are not tomorrow’s recommendations. Check what AI tools say about you now, rather than assuming.
- Start steadily, and keep going. Consistent facts, earned reviews and authoritative content accumulate.
And the constants hold, as they have for five hundred years: trust, clarity, being easy to find, and a reputation that others will vouch for. Every new medium has rewarded the businesses that had those things and knew how to express them in the new format.
We have helped clients through several of these shifts since 2004. If you’d like to talk about this one, tell us about your firm.
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