Principles of Marketing

MODULE 1 | LESSON 1

The Evolution of Digital and Social Media Marketing

The media landscape has changed dramatically over the past few decades. As a result, the way content is created, distributed and consumed has changed. In this exercise, we will reflect on the evolution of media from 1970 until today.

Take-home assignment

INSTRUCTIONS

Talk to a parent, family member or friend about the evolution of media over the years and answer the following questions:

01

Imagine you’re an aspiring travel writer and producer. You go on a road trip, take some beautiful pictures, film some footage and write about the experience in a diary. Then you decide you want to publish an article with some of your pictures and tips for people who would like to do the same trip. Now think about the 1970s. What would you have had to do if you wanted your story to reach at least 100 people? How about in the 1990s?

And in 2000? What could you do now?

Note: Feel free to add to the options your interviewee gives you. Use the information to fill out the table below.

Time frame	Distribution options
1970s
1990s
2000s
Today

Unit 1 | Build a Social Media Presence

02

Using the information from your interviews and internet research, create a timeline from 1970 to today that lists the key media types used at the time. You can list the media brands that were or became available during each time period.

03

Now, draw a vertical line on your timeline to indicate when we saw a shift from one-to-many (non-interactive) media to one-to-one (interactive) media. What prompted the shift?

Unit 1 | Build a Social Media Presence

Rubric

Objective Meets expectations? (Y/N) Additional

feedback

Student can adequately represent the shifts in media and content creation.

Student can roughly identify when the shift from

one-to-many to one-to-one media took place.