Marketing has to evolve along with the Internet to stay relevant
04/29/10 07:46 AM Filed in: Marketing
I enjoy reading stories about social media marketing because I can often tell the "facts from the press release garbage" right up front. There are brand managers (an outdated term today) who talk about the number of followers they have on Facebook when most of us really know that statistic doesn't mean a hell of a lot. There are also people who feel they need to develop a social media strategy for products like dishwasher detergent and salads. The obviously are reaching for things that just aren't there.
Most of all I am stunned that publications like Ad Age continue to sponsor Internet Marketing 101 seminars where people with huge ego's get a chance to add another bullet point to their resumes. There are no such thing as social media "experts" just people who understand what consumers want and those who do not. Some social media experts get noticed because they are great at drawing graphics while others get noticed for providing blinding obvious insights. Marketers who view these people as experts are showing their ignorance when it comes to just how much marketing has changed today.
In a nutshell consumers have become smarter and marketers have become dumber. Marketers love to quantify everything they do and develop nice looking Power Point presentations while their audience moves on and asks "what have you done for me lately ?" Managers are more worried about being politically connected than being Linchpins and as long as they do that they are protected even though they are bad marketers.
If marketing is going to survive corporate people who view marketing as an expense they need to make changes and make them quickly. We are slowly emerging from this recession but make no mistake about it consumer behavior has changed forever thanks to the Internet and social media. Marketing is slow to change because organizational behavior is slow to change and because most mission statements are propaganda. Mass marketing is dead. GRP is dead. Reach & frequency is dead. Marketers please stop trying to revive dead marketing metrics to new media and changed consumers.
Marketing will survive only when marketers are willing to acknowledge that consumers are smarter than they are and that they have to earn their trust and business everyday.
