Marketing is dead. Long live marketing!
Posted by 
Michael) on May 12 2008 | Tagged as: Social Media
photo by monkeyc.net
I live in a world that thinks everything can be bought. No effort required, just an abundance of cash and a good agency.
I live in a world that sees advertising agencies as a bridge to customers. No creative energy is required on a company’s part, budget and brand guidelines are all that’s needed.
I live in a world that thinks marketing is a foreign language. Advertising agencies are somehow both copywriters and interpreters.
STOP!
Why have we done this to ourselves?
Whatever happened to our own personality? Is it that hard to promote or are we hoping something gets lost between the real us and the perceived us like in a game of Chinese whispers?
Why do we insist on pursuing tactics and deploy strategies that annoy the very people we aim to impress?
And perhaps more important, what is it going to take to reverse this?
You listening?
If you haven’t already felt the wind of change, where the hell have you been? Still wasting time and energy playing with the laws of diminishing returns by investing more and more of your 1.0 marketing budget in people like him, or him, or him?
Doubt it.
For a start if you had, he would have told you that 1.0 communication isn’t what he “does” anymore, as it’s like private English lessons in a foreign country. The teachers talk for 60 minutes about the rant of the day in English while the student is duped into thinking he or she is actually getting something out of it.
Sound like hard work? Of course it doesn’t because the teachers do absolutley nothing to add value for their customers.
Easy money for the teacher. Crap service for the student. Sound familiar?
Get it?
I’m not saying all English teachers are lazy. What I am saying is that their market is so huge, they don’t have to try. But what if the people the English students had to talk to couldn’t understand a word they were saying and took issue with the students?
I wonder how fast word of mouth would backfire if the onus for their students’ success rested firmly on the teachers’ shoulders?
I wonder how quickly they would re-map they way they service their customers by rooting out the real strengths and weaknesses of their students and working out a language plan based on those.
Isn’t the role of an advertising/marketing agency similar? Aren’t they supposed to point their clients in the right direction? Then why is it that so few have made the jump from diffusion to dissemination?
As Roger Anderson put it, in his piece in The Age of Conversation:
“Dissemination is an active form of distribution; diffusion is passive. Dissemination means to sow seeds. In nature, all things tend to randomness and diffusion is a perfect example. The spread of ideas or concepts among disinterested people is a passive process that also tends towards randomness. A better way to retain message consistency throughout your company, group, or organization, is to disseminate the message by creating message owners at every level.”
Why aren’t agencies able to tell their clients to be themselves, not represent themselves?
Over on the Advertising For Peanuts blog, T. Willerer has started a new language of marketing and I couldn’t agree more.
- consumers → people
- campaign → conversation
- 30 second spot → 30 second interaction
- direct response → direct conversation
- Customer Relationship Management (CRM) → Vendor Relationship Management (VRM)
- purchase funnel → instant research & purchase
- reach → attention
- consumer insight → human truth
- marketing mix modeling → predictably irrational
- brand loyalty → loyal brands
- advertising agency → business partner
Look again and all it is is a transformation from an analytical language to an emotional one. Is it that hard to get across?
Fortunately for me, it seems that it is. Not everyone wants to try another form of communication. Most are still happy to spend weeks coming up with a cunning message and then (hundreds of) thousands of dollars trying to push it down your throat. I say they can keep it.
Yet some companies out there have a real passion for what they do. You can almost spot them a mile away.
They believe in engaging their customers, and see that as part of their long-term growth strategy.
Those are the companies I’m seeking out.
The others can go their own way.
Still not getting it?
Then you need to read this:
7 Principles to fully engage your customers: written by Bryan K. Williams
Once you’re done with that, have a look at these:
7 Principles to Fully Engage Your Customers - Part 2 - There I was…excited to dine in a popular steakhouse with my wife. After all, this night was to celebrate her final day of coursework in her professional degree program. Although we eat out regularly, we especially were looking forward …
Seth Godin - Hershey, American Airlines and SchoolClick.com - I tell them I love your country – but I’m doing business in the US please transfer me back to my country where they speak my language and where there is not a ten second delay each time he or I say a word - making the conversation…
Redefining reach; the new marketing equation - While I was at StartupCamp this past Sunday here in San Francisco a few of the future founders came up to me asking my advice on how they should approach PR/advertising. Many of their questions (as small pre-startups) echo the same…
Why Fall in Love with a Company? - They were green way before their time, way way before anyone else was, another layer to it’s 50 plus year history and integrity - both of which - speak loudly to where I want to spend my dollars. I guess you could say we’ve been married…
The Sales pitch is dead. Time to re-invent selling - Do you remember a decade or so ago when focus switched from ‘getting’ customers (selling) to keeping them? Sales-led organizations the world over were struck in particular by Fred Reichheld’s book The Loyalty Effect (1996) with his bath…
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