“Mass marketing is doomed.” – Bob Garfield, author of The Chaos Scenario: Amid the Ruins of Mass Media, the Choice for Business is Stark: Listen or Perish, on NPR.

Bob Garfield talks and writes about marketing on NPR and in Advertising Age as well as a number of other media outlets, and he’s not alone in thinking that mass marketing is on the way out. In general, he and many others say that the internet, DVR, satellite radio and other new technologies will so fragment the audience that marketing to the masses will no longer make sense. After all, with targeted marketing you can spend a little to reach the 100,000 people who really want your product instead of spending a lot to reach 10,000,000 people and hoping the right 100,000 hear the message.

But do people really want advertising that’s geared toward them? Well, as it turns out, they don’t. Especially when the companies doing the targeting are tracking their customers’ online (and offline) activity in order to find and advertise specifically to them.

I’m a firm believer that though we can’t always control the events that affect us, we can always take charge of our responses. I would say that the ability to see a range of possibilities in every turn of events and to make the best of things is probably a quality shared by effective marketers.

A popular definition of insanity is “doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.” This deep and lasting recession shows that companies which persist in doing the same old things are often getting different—and disappointing—results.

Indulge us for a moment while we talk a little about our website. Like proud parents, we just can’t help ourselves. We love the whole site, of course, but we do have one part that’s our favorite – the Relationships section. Why? Because relationships are what The Bloom Agency is all about, and in this section we’re able to explain – and demonstrate – just what that means.

 It’s official – we’re in a recession. Pennies are being pinched. Belts are being tightened. Companies are looking for ways to save money. But should the marketing budget be cut along with first-class plane tickets and four-star hotels?

You could Google “marketing in a recession” or “advertising in a downturn” and find a few dozen articles on the subject, but luckily you don’t have to, because we’ve already done it. We’ve gone through a slew of white papers, research papers, magazine articles and the occasional blog entry, and we’ve boiled the whole mishmash down into a nice palatable stew. Then we added our own point of view to give it a little meat.

Enjoy.