I'm always amused by the way that what's old is always treated as new when it comes to online/digital marketing. While the methods may be different, brand positioning has always involved using the attributes, features and (especially) short-comings and weaknesses of the market players.
And the idea of "piggybacking" on other services that you know that users want isn't really new either... It's why Coke is the only cola you can get at certain baseball stadiums - Coke knows that people will come to the stadium and buy drinks, and they're "piggybacking" on that to drive demand in general.
No, no one's claiming that anything is new. The fundamental rules of business do not change. What does change is that all this happens in a world of perpetual connectivity now and so some of the frictions go down, metrics become more trackable and the whole process becomes more controllable. So yes, some things do change.
And the idea of "piggybacking" on other services that you know that users want isn't really new either... It's why Coke is the only cola you can get at certain baseball stadiums - Coke knows that people will come to the stadium and buy drinks, and they're "piggybacking" on that to drive demand in general.