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Like water to a vessel, marketers must adapt to today’s many media platforms if they want to succeed. That is, in essence, what Marshall Self, Head of Media Solutions at Google Canada, told his audience at the November 5 annual .

Self highlighted how new technologies – smartphones in particular – have fostered a new generation of consumers, and a new audience by the same token. For him, the most pressing challenge for marketers in this new universe is finding the right target consumers and contributing to their quest for a better life.

Self says that brands don’t sell themselves to consumers anymore. On the contrary, it’s the consumers that do the selling by expressing their support in the many communication platforms they have access to. He suggests marketers maximize their ads’ efficiency by making them more accessible and user-friendly (through the use of Skip Ad buttons, for instance), then let consumers find them and take action as they deem appropriate.

This approach, he says, is not only key in this new era, but is the only way that marketers’ can optimize their chances of generating true consumer engagement toward their brands. In order to do so, they must leverage new technologies to create content with truly powerful messages that takes into account consumer behaviors, opinions and expressions of interest.

Not only that, but marketers should no longer limit themselves to the time and space constraints imposed by conventional media (30 seconds, full page, etc.), according to Self. Instead they should take advantage of all the attention consumers are ready and willing to give to their message in their search for timely information.

Self concluded his presentation by showing examples of campaigns that demonstrated his concepts brilliantly by brands such as Pepsi, VW, Dodge and Burberry – campaigns that actually achieved that much-desired consumer engagement.