Has Promotion Replaced Authentic Discovery in Culture?

The discovery of things like music, fashion, and art used to feel like a personal journey. Sometimes you’d stumble across new content by chance when browsing in your favourite shops, and other times you might hear about it through friends. This is still possible, but it feels like we’ve moved on from that era.

Now, promotions online are designed to guide people towards new content that they may not have discovered before. Because these offers are often packed with value, they have almost replaced authentic discovery in today’s culture.

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Promotions Guide People to Try Things

Promotions can be seen almost everywhere nowadays, with their main purpose being to provide people with value and encourage them to spend with a certain brand. However, they can also serve a secondary function in encouraging people to try new things that they may not have considered before.

This is often seen in the iGaming market, where offers are linked with top games. For example, the Sky Vegas promotions include a free spins offer to be used with specific games. This guides them to some of the top games on the site and shows them the kind of quality they can expect when they play there. Players may not have considered these games before, but thanks to the offer, they may go on to enjoy them.

It’s not just freebies that can guide people to try new offerings in entertainment. Indeed, lots of promotions for television series and films are designed to create FOMO. Netflix has got this down to an art form, and it will often create short-form teasers and countdowns to generate anticipation for series that some viewers probably wouldn’t have considered watching if it had simply been presented in their feeds with no fanfare. Indeed, these campaigns can become cultural moments and can lead to users spreading the word about them.

Curated Discovery Is the Way Forward

With so much content to choose from across entertainment platforms, users may find it harder to actively discover art for the first time themselves. However, the leading services like Netflix and Spotify use technology to help nudge people in the right direction. Thanks to complex algorithms, they can make suggestions to people and give them a sense that they are finding new titles for themselves.

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A great example of this form of curated discovery is in Spotify’s playlists, which are generated for individual users daily. These are based on users’ past listens and are usually grouped by a particular genre. This means that new artists are gradually fed to users among content they already like, making the introduction of new material smooth.

Various other lesser-known platforms can guide people to discovery in a similar way. For example, Boiler Room features live-streamed DJ sets, allowing music fans to experience music they might not have had a chance to listen to.

Online promotions have changed how people discover art, with many users nudged towards new options. It’s still possible to explore online platforms independently, but algorithmic curation has almost rendered this unnecessary.