Social Media Effect: "Barely Negligible"



　

If you're in the business of selling stuff, according to one big-time

research firm, social media marketing is a waste of your time and money.

Forrester Research has released a report recently that concludes...

"Social tactics are not meaningful sales drivers".

While the hype around social networks as a driver of influence in eCommerce

continues to capture the attention of online executives, the truth is that

social continues to struggle and registers as a barely negligible source of

sales for either new or repeat buyers. In fact, fewer than 1% of transactions

for both new and repeat shoppers could be traced back to trackable social

links. Now think about this for a minute. This study is about

the influence of social media on sales. If the influence on sales is "barely negligible" can you

imagine the influence on retail sales (which account for about 94% of

everything sold?) What's below barely negligible? Strongly negligible?

The study goes on to say...

The reality is that even the most popular social image-sharing sites (like Pinterest) have failed to

move the needle with respect to sales for most retail sites. To tell you the truth, even I

was a little shocked reading about this study. There aren't too many people in

the ad world who are more skeptical about the magical power of social media

marketing than I am. But I thought the truth probably fell somewhere between

"magic" and "barely negligible." !! However there is one technique that continues to move the

needle dramatically and that is Interactive Marketing Communication...properly executed for

course!

　

　

Nobody yet appears to have hit upon a solution to improving marketing, and thus advertising,

yet it has to happen because they have both become a dangerous

monster in need of harness. It has to be said that people don't seem to like big

business very much, we really don't like the power that companies have and we

certainly don't trust them to use them in our best interests! Advertising is

not about hope but expectations, marketing is not about dreams

but plans.

The false prophets of modern marketing have warped more than the

language of consumerism. The future is unknowable, what can be known,

commentary suggests, is that social media and the Internet is replicating the

same errors old advertising and marketing committed. Somebody needs to make a

move, unilaterally determining that Social Media et al are not excellent

marketing vehicles . merely more clutter!

Over the past two years, that evolution [the difficulty of "influencing

customers by relying solely on one-way, push advertising"] has only accelerated.

More and more consumers are using digitalrecorders to fast-forward through TV commercials and

are consuming video content on Web sites such as YouTube and on mobile devices. Billboards

alongside train lines and bus routes struggle to capture the attention of people absorbed

by the screens of their smart phones. Meanwhile, today's more empowered,

critical, demanding, and price-sensitive customers are turning in ever-growing

numbers to social networks, blogs, online review forums, and other channels to

quench their thirst for objective advice about products and to identify brands

that seem to care about forming relationships with them. Individuals even are

posting their own commercials on YouTube. In short, the avenues (or touch

points) customers use to interact with companies have continued to multiply.

The problem for many companies is that the very things that make push marketing

effective tight, relatively centralized operational control over a well-defined

set of channels and touch points hold it back in the era of engagement.

Online advertising has of course become a multi-million...

,

...if not billion, dollar enterprise what with the entire world online at one point or another at any

given time of the day. Surely if you're a brand manager or brand marketer you

know the value of online advertising as part of an overall integrated

marketing campaign.

But what if the most powerful brand ambassadors in the world are not the

least bit interested in your online advertising? What would you do then?

Well you may want to go back to the proverbial drawing board Mr. & Mrs.

Brand Manager because based on a recent survey, the most powerful brand

ambassadors are indeed not the least bit interested in your online

advertising, at least a large majority of them.

And in just in case there were any doubts as to whom the most powerful brand

ambassadors are, when you factor in that women account for 85% of all consumer purchases

including everything from autos to health care, it only stands to reason that

the most powerful ambassador a brand can have is a woman.

As to the aforementioned survey, the folks at Ask Your Target Market or AYTM recently

surveyed consumers on their likes and dislikes when it came

to online advertising. Overall, the results showed that when asked how likely

they were to click on an online ad, 65% indicated they were either not very

likely or not likely at all to click on an online ad! Only Interactive Marketing Communication can

attract your target market to your advertising...and be effective as well!

Even today, Einstein's ideas about gravity and the speed of light are still being tested and scrutinized.

Not so in advertising and marketing. If enough big mouths say the same things loud enough and often enough they quickly become facts.

As most readers know, I am highly skeptical of many of the claims made about the magical powers of digital advertising.

The other night it occurred to me that perhaps a good analogy for the effectiveness of digital communication in advertising is the effectiveness of digital communication in education. While there are obviously some huge differences, there are also some similarities.

Marketing experts have been warning us that unless we commit ourselves fully to digital technology, we will die. Similarly, education experts have been saying that digital communication technology is the only way to dig ourselves out of the education mess we have created.

In 1997, a committee appointed by then President Bill Clinton, which included Charles Vest, president of MIT and Charles Young, ceo of Hewlett-Packard, warned us that we had an urgent need to bring computer technology to our classrooms. The fact that there was inadequate research on the effectiveness of classroom computers didn't bother them. They concluded...
"The panel does not... recommend that the deployment of technology....be deferred pending the completion of such research."
They, too, were in a big "do or die" hurry.

In addition to issuing hysterical warnings about the dire consequences of not adopting their pet panaceas, educators and marketers also face challenges that are similar.

First, they have to decide what to do with a fixed and limited budget. Would a school district get better results for its money by hiring more teachers, putting computers in classrooms, paying for more teacher training, buying more books, or doing any number of other things with its budget?

Similarly, would a marketer get better results by hiring more sales people, buying a spot on the Super Bowl, doing trade incentives, creating an online advertising program, or doing something else with their money?

A second resemblance is that digital technology seems attractive in both cases because not only does it promise a new way of communicating, it also promises a more engaged participant. The undeniable allure of technology is assumed to create a more engaged individual -- whether that individual is a student or a consumer.

Finally, in both cases digital technology also presumably provides a more interactive experience -- an end to the one-way communication style of teacher-to-student or marketer-to-consumer.

With those parallels in mind I started to do some research to see how wired classrooms were doing. The results were enlightening.

From a paper called "No Access, No Use, No Impact: Snapshot by Shopping Sidekick Plugin issued jointly by researchers from the University of Michigan and The University of North Texas, we learn...
There is general agreement that computing technologies have not had a significant impact on teaching and learning in K-12 in the U.S., even though billions of dollars have been spent in purchasing, equipping, and supporting the technology.
From The New York Times piece entitled "Seeing No Progress, Some Schools Drop Laptops" we learn...
...the Liverpool Central School District, just outside Syracuse (NY), has decided to phase out laptops starting this fall, joining a handful of other schools around the country that adopted one-to-one computing programs and are now abandoning them as educationally empty — and worse...
"After seven years, there was literally no evidence it had any impact on student achievement — none," said Mark Lawson, the school board president...
...the United States Department of Education released a study showing no difference in academic achievement between students who used educational software programs for math and reading and those who did not...
In one of the largest ongoing studies, the Texas Center for Educational Research, a nonprofit group, has so far found no overall difference on state test scores between 21 middle schools where students received laptops in 2004, and 21 schools where they did not.
In a second NYTimes article called "In Classroom of Future, Stagnant Scores", we learn...
...the Kyrene School District (in Chandler, AZ) as a whole, offer what some see as a utopian vision of education’s future...
...the district’s use of technology has earned it widespread praise. It is upheld as a model of success by the National School Boards Association, which in 2008 organized a visit by 100 educators from 17 states who came to see how the district was innovating.
The digital push here aims to go far beyond gadgets to transform the very nature of the classroom, turning the teacher into a guide instead of a lecturer, wandering among students who learn at their own pace on Internet-connected devices.
Advocates for giving schools a major technological upgrade — which include powerful educators, Silicon Valley titans and White House appointees — say digital devices let students learn at their own pace, teach skills needed in a modern economy and hold the attention of a generation weaned on gadgets.
The techno-crowd in both the education and advertising industry have a lot in

common.

They are very strong in their assertions, and very weak on proof.

They continue to inflate the hysterical threat-of-not-accepting-their-solution language, despite

contradictory data.They think anecdotes are evidence.

When data does not support their position, they jump to false goals -- like

the dubious engagementargument.There is a lesson to be learned here. Whether you are

selling cheeseburgers, trying to lift the educational achievement of children, or

operating in any other field of endeavor, technology has so far proven to be no

substitute for strategy.

Advertising and Marketing have to accept there is no way out of their decline.

Ehrenberg's resolute focus on the facts, what data actually tells us led him to challenge many a marketing bandwagon such as loyalty'.

 

The rot began when we chose never to take heed of Professor Ehrenberg's statements on advertising effectiveness! Because nothing has changed despite all the ballyhoo about Social Media, Facebook et al. Wherever ads appear, especially on Social Media, Ehrenberg's resolute focus on the facts, what data actually tells us led him to challenge many a marketing bandwagon such as loyalty'. You may wish to improve the brand's performance by  improving customer retention', he observed, but without a higher market penetration it just won't happen. His work on advertising effectivenesswas equally challenging. He argued convincingly that there was no evidence that advertising persuades anybody to do anything; advertising can only ever be a weak' force that improves brand recognition and/or jogs consumers' memories.

　

What happens in real life is what matters to or between customers

.

Marketers should focus on creating social meaning and social utility-things that help real

world social interaction or support the group's interests-rather than forcing

meaning on individuals through brain washing or bribery. Products or services

could be devised to be interesting enough to become talked about in the first

place. The first change in the way we think about media, must be a major

shift away from thinking about media as channels' down which we tip messages

and information. Only in so far as they serve and help advertisers access and

harness the power of the social networks that lie behind them.

Incidentally, an interesting piece of research has just emerged which confirms

what I have long suspected, whilst, at the same time, going along with my

suspicion about the creative ego and the use of very high priced Hollywood

directors! Advertisements starring high profile celebrities such as David

Beckham and Jamie Oliver do not sell products as well as those featuring every

day people, new research suggested. A study by the University of Bath and

the University of St Gallen in Switzerland, found that ordinary members of the

public are more effective in selling products than super stars paid millions to

endorse them. That's because people are more worried about keeping up with the

Jones's than the rich and famous! Never-the-less we guarantee that those

Advertising Agencies will keep on using highly paid Hollywood movie directors as

well as using the rich and famous as models, there goes millions more of the poor

old clients budget again;again;again! All I will say is this, use

Interactive Programs, properly executed, and you will not have to spend money on

Hollywood Directors or, for that matter, the likes of David Beckham etc.

So the next time your Advertising Agency comes with their invoice, go through it

with a fine toothcomb and delete the name(s) David Beckham, or whomever. Then

check out who the director is, if he's Hollywood, strike him out as well; we

guarantee that you'll be surprised at how much you can save. Then half

your budget and start using Interactive Marketing

programs, again, you'll be surprised at the positive results at a fraction

of your normal advertising costs!With Interactive Marketing

you don't have expensive, unnecessary add-ons! With Interactive Marketing

Communication you don't have wasteful coupons! With Interactive Marketing

Communication you don't have wasteful promotional activity! With Interactive

Marketing Communication you don't have David Beckhams! With Interactive

Marketing Communication you don't have expensive Hollywood movie Directors!

With Interactive Marketing Communications you do have sales and increased

profits! - plus a whole lot more.

You Have Huge Amounts of Data…so Why are you Starved of Knowledge?

Despite spending hours on the 'phone or online your customers are just not connecting with you, resulting in angry customers hanging up and going elsewhere.                         

 We are becoming more and more divided by technology. Your customers' dread interactive voice-response, the on-hold  music that doubles the annoyance of queuing, the codes  are all barriers to effective communication.  The rage among your customers has reached an intensity, which is now causing great damage to your relationship with your customers. We are now dehumanising our customer relationships even more than conventional advertising ever did, the very objective of which  was to do the exact opposite! Your customers appear to be invisible to  you except as  computer generated stereotypes, while your organisation is viewed as remote and unreachable causing stress and suspicion rather than customer satisfaction.  According to a recent study by database software specialist Data Vantage. Fully eighty nine percent of service providers are failing to deliver the seamless service your customers want.  Causing damage to your brands, customers to defect, thus putting more pressure on sales. It would appear that most customer information in to days service organisations, expensively acquired, is wasted, and what does get through to Management is contaminated, diluted or otherwise unusable.  All this results in huge amounts of waste. Companies are drowning in data however, they are, oddly enough, starved of knowledge!  All resulting from a misunderstanding of that little word "Communication"! It would appear, understandably I hasten to add, that one of the main reasons this frustration and anger occurs, is when one of your customers calls your 'phone centre to complain about a bill. and then they receive a threatening reminder through the  post a week later!  In reality you and your customers are being divided  by technology, your relationship, conducted through computers has become so depersonalised as to be dangerous to the very well being of your brands and business.  And sad to say any new channel of communication simply increases management's' opportunity to repeat mistakes. For example if you send an email, your call centre will not have seen it!        As we said earlier, all resulting from a complete misunderstanding of  that word "communication". So let us examine that word ˜communication' a little more closely. The dictionary definition of communications is as follows:  Communication. n. 1. transmitting 2. A giving or exchange of information, etc.  by talk, writing b) the information so given 3. A means of communicating  4. The science of transmitting information. The interesting fact is the  expression 'the exchange of information' . Communication is not a one-way flow of information. Talking at or to someone does not imply successful communication. This only occurs when the receiver actually receives themessage, which the sender intended to send. Message rejection, misinterpretation and misunderstanding are the opposite of effective communication. However most marketing communication today depends on a single-step communications model. A message sender,  the message receiver. This basic model assumes that the sender is active, whilst the receiver is inactive or passive and the message is comprehended properly. In this case if  the message is creatively prepared and sent through the right medium and, if it cuts through all the other noise, and then if it is decoded correctly the messagehas done its job!  In closing please allow me to stress that we are, despite appearances, creating more problems than we realise, all this new technology is doing is alienating your customers more than ever before. With all the other problems, clutter, meaningless noise, mistrust, it is now vital that we rethink  our position on all commercial communication. The fact is that you, the Clients, can literally halve your colossal marketing budgets and, armed with a true interpretation and understanding of the word "communication" and be far morecost effectiveâ¦on all counts! 

The Attraction of Interactive Communication is that it is a return to the prehistoric human fascination with telling tales!

Since the beginnings of any civilized society the market place was the hub of civilization, a place to which traders returned from remote lands with exotic spices, silks, monkeys, parrots, jewels - and fabulous stories. Interactive Communication, properly executed, more resembles an ancient bazaar than fits the business models companies try and impose upon it. 

People respond to interactive  opportunities because it seems to offer some intangible quality  long missing in action from modern life.  In sharp contrast to the alienation wrought by homogenized broadcast media, interactive opportunities provide a space in which the human voice would be rapidly rediscovered. Unlike the lockstep conformity imposed by television, advertising, and  corporate propaganda, interactive communication gives new legitimacy  and free rein  to play. People long for more connection between what we do for a living and what we genuinely care about.   We long for release from anonymity, to be seen as who we feel ourselves to be rather than the sum of abstract metrics and parameters.    We long to be part of a world that makes sense rather than accept the  accidental alienation imposed by market forces too large to grasp; to even contemplate. Remember the market place, of old. Caravans arrived across burning deserts dates and figs, snakes and parrots, monkeys, strange music and stranger tales.  The market place was the heart of the city, the kernel, the hub.Like the  past and the future it stood at the crossroads.   People worked early and went there for coffee and vegetables, eggs and wine, for pots and carpets.  They went there to look and listen and to marvel, to buy and to be amused.  But mostly they went to meet each other to talk and interact!  Markets are conversations.   So what went so horribly wrong? From the perspective of corporations, many of which by the twentieth century had become bigger and more powerful than ancient city-states, nothing went wrong. Things did change however. Commerce is a natural part of human life but is has become increasingly unnatural over the intervening centuries, gradually divorcing itself from the very people on whom it depends, whether workers or customers. The result has been to create a huge chasm between buyers and sellers. Advertising's failure! Conventional advertising has failed the natural human need for social  interaction. We have created a media society during the last 30 or 40 years where there is an extraordinary reduction in interaction because of the one-way and more passive form of information that exists.   People desire to be taken account of, to affect change, learn and personalize their relationships with their environment. These psychological and sociological factors are part of the  incentive to interact with advertising.  However, these tend to be minimized in the incentive direct response field, there are a phenomenal number of reasons which cause people to interact which go beyond just giving them things.

The lack of education about the communication process...

...means that millions are being poured down the black hole of ineffectiveness!   The problem is caused by advertising agencies, we all secretly feel that they are all a bunch of charlatans and yet! And yes, we have all met advertising people who were touchingly sincere and believed in what they were doing despite the lack of accountability! However the fact remains that most advertising people have minds so devoid of realism that they are still prepared to believe the mantra "advertising works!  

The science of communication is so mind-shatteringly elegant and inspiring that advertising, by its very nature, is demeaning and shallow and a total betrayal of what it is to actually communicate, especially when one considers what the human species has achieved in all else.  Perhaps the periodic swellings of emotion in the Western World over the past few years are, in actuality, the anguished pleas of a lonely and atomised populace dehumanised and depersonalised, and totally removed from any real social interaction, and desperate for company!  It is true to say that advertising is the enemy of rational thought, it encourages the victory of feeling over reason. Nevertheless there is a tremendous danger  to which big business appears to have succumbed in believing that advertising, in whatever form, is somehow invincible and all that we can do is debate alternatives within its framework.     Now advertising is dazzling us with the wonders of technology. It is  all so new, exciting and wonderfully opportune  and anyway if all that fails to excite us lets use cool sounding jargon!   The fact of the matter is  that Advertising is a grotesque manifestation of Top-Down-Management and has about as much intellectual rigour as Bambi! What is really foolish is that it clearly appeals to insecure political leaders who desperately want to be all things to all people!  In the current era of "The Market is always right", where have all the sceptics gone? There is no one to expose the bogus realities of much of advertising and marketing. Such is the grip of modern advertising that to question the omniscience of advertising is to bring down the wrath of God!  Which results in the Emperor still parading in his new birthday suit  and still totally unaccountable!  Advertisings' amazing benefits are simply an illusion conjured up by exotic advertising personalities of whom the biggest culprits were the Saatchi Brothers!  And boy did they lead the business world on a merry dance!  Advertising people refuse to learn from experience, and strive instead to discredit any new, superior methodof communication  denying us all of enlightenment and the benefits stemming from a superior method which, in turn, condemns them to repeat the past.  There is a far better way and it is proven accountable and very cost  effective!

Interactive Communication provides strong, accountable...

...(New) advertising.

Marketing leadership in driving business success has never been in more

demand, however they desperately need proven examples of "New"

Advertising...and Interactive Communication is the most definitely proven

"New Advertising" with over $10 million invested in independent research.

With Interactive Communication in place as a regular feature of your marketing

programme CMOs will discover that Interactive Communication provides a

strong marketing communications programme and will change the way in

which all advertising is conducted. Because it is totally accountable in both

analogue and digital.

Senior management is increasingly on the outlook for marketeers who don't

merely do things better but re-invent how they go about things. This is

particularly true in the face of vastly changing consumer behaviour dynamics

as evidenced by the explosion in Social Media. It's forcing a massive

reinvention of ways to both interpret customer needs and to market more

successfully.

As interactive moves in to quietly replace old advertising, the old advertising is

leaving us & Interactive Communication is arriving.

As we emerge from the recession we must resist the temptation of sliding

backwards. Take the time to study Interactive Communication, both you and

your organisation will be the better for it!Because Interactive Communication,

properly structured, will allow Senior Marketers to finally "engage" with their

audience. Sad to say despite the fact that interactive communication offers

unique opportunities for true accountability, many Clients still hold onto their

analogue mindsets!

　

Nobody In Advertising Appeared To Notice




When it was reported that 65% of all marketing spend had no effect on

consumers! Despite the fact that working in Advertising is not rocket

science, accountability is not a strong factor, creativity is! As more and

more evidence emerges as to the failure of advertising to do what it says it

does. Sell products/services, there are some errors that advertising people

commonly make. One is a complete failure to learn from experience. The other is

the advertising ego. Advertising people hate facing up to information like 65%

of all marketing spend had no effect because that forces us to acknowledge that

they aren't as clever as they make themselves out to be! These

unpalatable truths contribute to the increasing problems facing advertising,

like the meaningless noise syndrome. Together with a total lack of

understanding as to the true meaning of the word accountability, or, for that

matter communication. This declining effectiveness is due, in part, to

an earlier perception that over-estimated advertising's power. In the

industry's days of dominance, peopled believed it could change the ways

consumers think and behave, not just influence them to favour one brand in a

category they were already considering. In earlier days there was a

faith than when there was little objective difference among products, an

emotion-laden image is always used as a motivator. Much of this sense of

advertising's enormous power and the almost inevitable effectiveness of image

advertising grew as mass advertising followed mass manufacturing in the 50s'

and 60s. Mass manufacturing led to one-size-fits-all products. Local,

individualised, and speciality products disappeared, and mass consumerism was

achieved, yet strangely the recent statements on Advertising is a no win situation,

appears to trouble the Advertising Community not at all! Perhaps that is

because their bosses do not see through the fudges. The division of

labour that makes companies efficient in so far as they are is also a division

of knowledgeso why keep a dog and bark yourself? And who really wants (or

cares) to discover what communication really is? Frankly it shows us that

organisations can't always be run effectively, even when managed by highly

intelligent people. So why should advertising people pretend that that is not

also true of Advertising Agencies? The idea of advertising progress is

as enduring as any. Beyond the occasional doubt, advertising people do need to

believe that everything is all right in the world of make believe. So

the message of technological innovation, the computer, the Internet or Web 2.0,

the Mobile Telephone et al is received readily. Certainly with regard to

effective communication this perception of technological progress is mistaken.

The poor old customer, or in advertising speak, Consumer, does not want

to take delivery of even more messages, after all they do not appear to be

taking much notice of the messages that exist already! Perhaps we should

practice what Virgil preached, advertising should consist of always going

forward backwards!

What is it, precisely, that we do so much better than any other country?

althought I must admit that all the trade magazines say at one time or another

that " American & British Advertising is the best in the world". Whatever

that means! This recession is not a failure of market economics. It is a

reassertion of market economics after a decade in which we paid ourselves more

than we were producing, and funded it precariously and temporarily, together

with a total lack of accountability so that it took a while for the market to

rumble. Now a prosperity that always baffled ordinary citizens has collapsed.

The collapse of confidence is not irrational; it's the correction to a long run

of irrational confidence. All that stuff about the emerging Asian giants wasn't

just phrasemaking for party conference speeches. It was true. We're falling

behind. We face a mountain of debt: the difference between the life we are able

to sustain and the life we were enjoying. Marketing people, having misled the

customers for so long must now explain a reduction in their standard of living.

The great task facing the next generation of Top-Down Management is to help the

country to recognise and embrace its fate: that we should get poorer, and slip

with as good a grace as possible into the world's second league. Yes, there is a

rebalancing required: a rebalancing of popular expectation.

　

Forget all the talk of post-recession rebuilding.

We are still advertising with no accountability and must now reduce our expectations. The

coming nonsense is that when this recession is over, countries such as America & Britain

should seek and find our salvation in (in what will become a buzz phrase of 2009-10) a "new

Marketing model".

Wrong. Actually we're just stuffed. Marketing & Advertising hit a

tree. There is no replacement advertising model for us to drive off in. We must

bash out the dents, clear the broken glass, remove the bumper from the front

wheel, and limp on as best we can. We should accommodate ourselves to that

prospect. Instead, as our prosperity sinks, the Marketing gurus rhetoric will

go skyward. "New challenges", "a new vision", "post-millennial economy",

"thinking outside the box" ... "new technology" how wearisome this inspirational

PowerPoint pap becomes.

Already I can hear the so-called great and the good of

the (failed) Marketing and Advertising community boasting of the next

generation of marketing thrust. Melancholy will be the spectacle of a range

of middle-aged-to-elderly marketing & advertising throwbacks burbling about

life changes and sea changes and gear changes and step changes for American

& British Marketing. "Post-recession Britain ... new age ... new marketing

dispensation ... recalibrate ... re-balance ... blah, blah, blah." Oh boy, is

this nonsense going to sound wise. The riff will be that Western Marketing, like

America & Britain's must reinvent themselves.Behind the curve, and

banging the table as ever, they all have not yet latched on to the rhetoric of

the "new economic model". They are still trying to kick life back into the old

one. So the talk until recently has been about "kick-starting" the old

economy. This mindless attempt to return to routine is an indication either of

the absence of imagination, or of panic. But as it becomes apparent even to the

Marketing & Advertising community that there is to be no return to that

golden decade of no hard choices and uninterrupted growth together with Top Down

Management techniques that have failed miserably.

Although (the argument will concede) the old rust-belt industries of the 20th century had to

go, the West turned its back on industry rather too readily. We were bedazzled by

Marketing services, fool's gold from Mad Ave ; Soho.We need (wait for it) a

new Marketing model. First, we must (argh) "rebalance" our economy.

Media Agencies must seek out (key words) "a new generation" of shiny new media

strengths, a second-wave advertising renaissance. What, then, are these

strengths? Our talent (runs the argument) for (key word) "innovation"; an "IT"

(key word) generation; the potential of our existing (key word) "creative"

agencies and (key words) "high added-value" marketing activity; and our (key

words) "genius for invention". Vital to all this will be (key words) "skills",

"training" and "education". We should remind ourselves, too, of that inestimable

resource to our economy: English as a (key words) "world language". And it will all be

just so much hot air. What is it, precisely, that we do so much better than any

other country, althought I must admit that all the trade magazines say at one

time or another that " American British Advertising is the best in the

world". Whatever that means!

While we in the West tries to shore up the ruins of Marketing, nobody

 

appears to want to reshape it The financial crisis has transformed the global marketing world and, at the same time, discredited many of the ideas regarding advertising, marketing, consumers and society that were taken for granted in the pre-crisis decades.  Here nobody appears to see the crisis as an opportunity to build a new form of capitalism. Nobody seems to see that the future can be  and most certainly should be better than the past. Without a doubt the institutions discredited by the crisis can be replaced with something better, not merely patched up and restored. Corporations see the crisis entirely as a threat to established ways of life and modes of thinking. Nobody is presenting a vision, or even a credible thought, about how the crisis could produce a better tomorrow. The best that  has been offered is a promise to clear up the mess created by previous  corporations.  Without a doubt the new forms of advertising and marketing that must emerge from the crisis must be very different from the systems that were so badlydamaged in the early 1980. The transformation will not just be a matter of rewriting some rules or replacing some incompetent people. It will mean changing the relationship between markets and consumers that has defined each successive version of marketing. It is time to engage with citizens' anxieties about the profound problems of pre-crisis marketing and advertising suddenly  revealed in 2008, the creation of an over informed society, clutter, lack of accountability, the Internet,Social Media and so on. Like all those packaged-upbundles of bad debt, contemporary advertising has no fundamental value. It was misplaced faith in future economic growth that drove up the values of 30- second TV commercials! The Clients spent so much money on advertising because they believed that they were living in the best of times and that it wasall just a one way street - upwards! We all now know all this wasn't true!

　

　

Knowing your customers is especially useful at times of abrupt and unexpected change

- a recession, for example. Having a strong sense of why people buy from

you as well as what they buy can help you to avoid damaging knee-jerk responses.

Is everyone else in your sector rushing down-market in anticipation of a boom in

demand for cut-price 'value' offerings? If you stick it out at the top of the

market, you might be able to grab for yourself a big chunk of the tasty

high-margin business that remains.

Now, in future you must remember this, engaging your audience is key to your

future success< You should focus on "engagement", "relevance" and

"customization" to make an impact with consumers. Additionally the rise of

new media has ushered in the era of "performance marketing". Businesses

hoping to derive the maximum benefit from digital media must provide customers

with information tailored to their individual needs, be it

on the web, or analogue media. Communications should also take the form of a

two-way conversation, with consumers being able to customise the content they

receive in line with their personal preferences.

This means adopting a truly interactive communication mindset. The age of

push marketing is behind us. What counts now are dialogue, engagement and

relevance, Digital channels that can deliver consumers with established

interests can charge handsomely for that capability.

Customer focus is important, because it can help you to see beyond industry

orthodoxy and understand why people buy from you rather than go somewhere else.

It requires a different mindset and the ability to cast aside those cherished,

but often erroneous, shibboleths about what can and cannot be done, that all

businesses create for themselves.

　

Finally Marketing & Advertising have mastered the Moonwalk

　

　



...slipping backward, but maintaining the illusion of progress. The other

day I was talking to two advertising people and asked them "Do you think that

advertising and marketing have to change?" Both professions had their

absolute heyday in the 1950s/1960s and both have spent the past 20 years or so

trying to recapture that glory. Both businesses have spent Clients money like

quadrillionaires and have led Clients together with TV, Newspapers and

Magazines down a road of financial lunacy by thoroughly misleading us all,

after all isn't "Advertising Works" a totally misleading statement?

Ultimately the two advertising people agreed, advertising & marketing has to

change, however, and, rather surprisingly, this change has nothing to do with

new media but to do with the desperate need for accountability and ROI,

together with the desperate need to understand the word communication!

The 60s!Ah that was a glittering time, advertising people ruled the business

world...nobody was being at all difficult about their profession, nobody was

questioning the fact that advertising works, or does not as the case may be.

There was a sense that Advertising men were men of action together with the

fact the men were brilliant. The problem was that these men of action wanted

to act, but certainly they did not want to tell the Client that the advertising

job could not be done. Men of action want to act. They are paid very

generously to act, they have entered advertising to act. But they couldn't tell

anyone how difficult things were, that advertising was not as simple as it

appeared. So doubts were, and still are, excluded, and the facts were altered to

suit the theory. Advertising men don't just become prisoners of their

Clients. They also become prisoners of their errors. Advertising and Marketing

people never questioned the fact that advertising and marketing never worked

they just chased the illusion that creativity was the answer to all their problems

and just followed one expensive creative person with another as logic took

over from common sense. Make the buying of media more important.

Enhancing the theory that advertising works requires staggering amounts of

research with staggering amounts of money, the life of the current advertising

world suggests that that is easier wished for than achieved.

Because of the failure of advertising to understand the process of

communication they have damaged a totally good "old media" whilst, at the

same time, rushing onto the Internet not understanding

at all that the Internet is most certainly not an advertising medium at all!

Reinvent your marketing!

One-way, top-down communication does not work as

well as in former days. Today, companies must create conversations with

customers and deliver useful content at the moment their prospects, clients or

constituents need it. Many firms will need to reinvent their marketing in

2013.

Marketers can't push products on people. They have to think like journalists and create a dialogue

with their audience to earn a prospect's trust. Free or low-cost applications such as blogs and

podcasts, in addition to social networking tools such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, have

changed the old rules. But above all else stands Interactive Maketing Communication...your only

way forward and totally accountable.

Your complete and utter lack of understanding of the word "communication"

together with a lack of appreciation as to what can, and does, stifle effective communication.

All advertising is a form of learning whereby the advertiser is asking people to change their behavior after learning the benefits of the products or services on offer. However, we all tend to filter out information, which we do not want to hear. This clearly alters the effectiveness of conventional advertising in quite a dramatic way.

The final purchase decision is invariably a compromise and this leads to a certain amount of anxiety; the worry that perhaps the decision was not the best or the right one. In order to minimise this anxiety the purchaser seeks to reinforce their choice and begins to take more notice of their chosen product's marketing communications.

Due to a lack of understanding of the communication process we have created a media society during the past 40 or 50 years, where the whole process has been de-humanized.

There is now an extraordinary reduction in interaction because conventional advertising and marketing have become a one-way practice whereby information is disseminated in a passive form.

So what are you going to do about this?

Is Advertising all about Fraud?


　

It is said that Edward Bernays taught corporate America and the Federal Government to lie, his spirit lives on today!

It's about time that we had some straight talk about, what we call Fraudgate, because most advertising and marketing reporting is total BS!

A combination of wishful thinking, propaganda and deliberate deception. We've been trying to track accountability (or rather the lack of it) in advertising and marketing for over twenty years. The one constant that keeps returning is "How do these people get away with it"? Because the real mystery is how come that they are spending even more money on advertising in these days of economic deprivation.

Nobody seems to grasp the scope and depth of the dishonesty in advertising, in marketing, in Business Schools, in Government – in fact it's all over!

The first thing you need to know about advertising and marketing is that it is everywhere, but any attempt to construct any form of accountability is absurd and pointless – the fact is there just ain't none!

The main tool employed by advertising people is the mantra, totally untrue by the way, "Advertising works".

Amazingly. Marketing has got away with the perpetuation of complete and utter crap regarding the supposed benefits of advertising.

We now accept unquestioningly the supposed reality of what advertising and marketing people routinely present as "fact", despite the absence of any kind of evidence, of any kind, to support this "fact"!

There appears to be a kind of collective denial that kicks in when any discussion on Marketing and advertising commences and you cannot really register the fact that there really is no supporting evidence to substantiate the outlandish claims made on behalf of advertising.

We now routinely allow these people to get away with murder, killing off our free press, producing substandard television, providing us with an over-informed media. And the real frightening thing? We don't know where it's all going to end.

Supposedly we live in an age when it is easier to communicate

than ever before. The sad fact is that due to the fact that we live in an over informed society, we

are now turning away from the downpour of information that is vainly trying to

attract our attention. The problem is so huge, so vast, that it is

difficult to know where to start. However, let's look at just one small area, an area that affects us all,

Customer Services. When it comes to complaining you

must first bypass "Customer Services" - a service which is actually a cunning

modern day ploy NOT to serve customers! Nowadays if you have the

audacity to attempt 'phone contact with almost

any organisation, you will, undoubtedly, be put through to the hell of "Customer

Services". New technology, new legislation, together with new

management styles, are the weapons in this new age of

customer alienation. I wonder what on earth they are teaching these days

at the Business Management

Schools The new age of alienation is practised most effectively

by the larger organisations - banks, utility companies, Local Councils and etc.

To me all this new technology, even in this great age of easier

communication, allows those who couldn't really be bothered an easier opportunity to be just

that, not really be bothered with you, the customer! And most of what

passes for marketing looks as if the practitioners of advertising really couldn't be bothered -

advertising has run out of inspiration. And this is despite the fact that

advertising is the main cause of all that information

clutter out there! Advertising has always had a bad name, nowadays it

appears to be getting worse.It has been brought lower and lower by the

execrable standards of television, especially "reality" TV, and by liars, the

'phone scams and hucksters parading across our T.V screens. Perhaps,

just perhaps, you might think that this is too strong a condemnation, well then

please consider this. It embarrassing to have to say this however the Government

is being urged to repay VAT earned from phone-in scandals. That just how low the

hucksters of TV have brought the TV Industry!

We really need a more ethical advertising, and our whole concept of marketing practice needs to change

.

We must recognise that advertising has real responsibilities and that marketing is not just about

making money. Nobody yet appears to have hit upon a solution to improving marketing, and thus

advertising, yet it has to happen because they have both become a dangerous

monster, in need of harness. It has to be said that people don't seem to like

big business very much, we really don't like the power that companies have and

we certainly don't trust them to use them in our best interests! Advertising

is not about hope but expectations, marketing is not about dreams

but plans. The false prophets of modern marketing have warped more than the

language of consumerism. The future is unknowable, what can be known,

commentary suggests, is that social media and the Internet is replicating the

same errors old advertising and marketing committed. Somebody needs to make a

move, unilaterally determining that Social Media et al are not excellent

marketing vehicles merely more clutter!

Be brutally honest, do you have any idea how advertising works?

How advertising got itself into its present mess. No? Perhaps you console yourself

with the thought that it doesn't matter that you don't have a clue because there

are plenty of smart marketing people out there who do. Well, here's the tricky

part. Yes, those smart marketing people do indeed have a shrewd

idea on how to steer the world out of marketing chaos. The bad news is, they're not

all the same prescription. In fact they are different prescriptions. Very

different.

We snigger at fortune-tellers yet continue to take seriously the word of advertising

and marketing people, professions definable as people who have found a way to retain professorial

tenure even when their predictions turn out to be entirely wrong. Read the rival

pronouncements of the world's top advertising people and you soon find yourself

agreeing that their guess is as good as anybody else's. Because in Marketing

and advertising nobody knows anything! Even more disturbing, the arguments

about Social Media and how to fix advertising that we hear today are but a

queasy echo of those we heard years ago regarding the introduction of Commercial

TV...and didn't that work out well? Similar arguments about involvement, The

Internet, Social Media et al are today being regurgitated over the current

crisis. So what should we be doing? I really don't know except that we should

really study the meaning of the word communication a little more urgently. My

only excuse is that the people we rely on to know don't have a common style either.

We really need a more ethical advertising, and our whole concept of marketing practice needs to change

.

We must recognise that advertising has real responsibilities and that marketing is not just about

making money. Nobody yet appears to have hit upon a solution to improving marketing, and thus

advertising, yet it has to happen because they have both become a dangerous

monster, in need of harness. It has to be said that people don't seem to like

big business very much, we really don't like the power that companies have and

we certainly don't trust them to use them in our best interests! Advertising

is not about hope but expectations, marketing is not about dreams

but plans. The false prophets of modern marketing have warped more than the

language of consumerism. The future is unknowable, what can be known,

commentary suggests, is that social media and the Internet is replicating the

same errors old advertising and marketing committed. Somebody needs to make a

move, unilaterally determining that Social Media et al are not excellent

marketing vehicles merely more clutter!

Advertising now has to go beyond "telling" people about products using mass media,



and advanced upon "listening" to customers through Interactive Marketing Communication programmes together with loyalty schemes and market research.

Advertising is now moving towards the third generation of true customer engagement, characterised by 'talking', by engaging in open-ended dialogue with customers. Through interactive programmes we can understand customers preferences and passions, we can identify consumers across brands and experiences. For marketing and advertising to be truly effective, operators need to have customer information that enables interactive targeted and relevant communications. Giving customers the choice to opt in or out of campaigns enables them to be user specific and ultimately provide more value. The widespread use of interactive communication messaging creates a far-reaching and significant marketing opportunity for brands.

By putting a reliable interactive communications infrastructure in place, and a means of controlling and measuring campaigns, Clients can deliver some of the most highly effective marketing initiatives through well structured and relevant interactive programmes. Lets face it, without improving the understanding and content of advertising and marketing all business must remain understandably concerned that advertisings' inflexibility inherent in the concept of creativity will act as a barrier to economic growth. It is also regrettable that these barriers come accompanied by rhetoric that still sounds as though agencies still believe the words "Advertising Works" because it doesn't! For advertising to enter 2011 the message must be sent that Advertising has demonstrably improved and that only the best and the brightest will not merely be tolerated, but are actively desired. Advertising people suffer from self-esteem enhanced but talent-deprived capabilities and, sad to say, advertising suffers from an inexhaustible supply of untalented people actively encouraged by indulgent clients who appear unable to criticise them! Unfortunately we are almost alone in our willingness to tell the hard truths, and it appears that there is a growing chorus of voices trying to convince these untalented people that hard work isn't necessary any more and they're entitled to a lengthening list of benefits paid for by others and that they don't have to accept the consequences of their actions when these consequences are bad. Advertising desperately needs the return of elder statesmen. Whilst the current fashion is to get rid of old advertising people, this should be stopped...immediately. Because advertising and marketing needs to listen to their advice, these wise old men who have already been through advertising downturns, marketing reviews and outlandish waste and who could spot all the tricks and bluffs as practised by to-days bumped up experts

　

Wake Up Marketing - Face the 21st Century

　

　

　

Your innovation-averse culture must go!

Marketing and advertising are on the slide. When will these once great

businesses confront reality and fight back? Because at the moment both

Advertising and Marketing have become innovation-averse cultures! Both

professions are risk-averse, innovation-averse and antipathetic to new

ideas.

Worse than that they are totally lacking in accountability because those

given responsibility do not have the requisite authority and knowledge to

discharge it.

So what's behind the decline and fall? Most certainly a sclerotic marketing

system that doesn't have the power to re-examine the need for massive

re-evaluation of the process of advertising and marketing. It's antiquated,

early 19th Century concepts do not work, (if they ever did!) they still do not

have any true accountability.

It may be that the future scholar identifies Advertising's sclerotic, twisted

concepts of communication as the biggest business weakness of all.Simply put.

An early 19th century concept cobbled together by a small number of

opportunistic men cannot properly function for the Western world at the

beginning of the 21st century. The current system of Advertising &

Marketing is an anachronism.

Among business people cynicism about advertising ability to deliver grow, now

with the advent of the Internet, this can only increase this cynicism.

The twin challenges to advertisings' 60-year old hegemony are enormous. The

first is a total misunderstanding of the word "communication" and a misplaced

belief that "creativity" is the sole criteria for the success or otherwise of

advertisings ability to sell products and services. Secondly there is a broad

global trend towards the internet together with the frightening inability of

advertising to be totally accountable, in the case of the latter just how long

can this stupidity last? Just when does Marketing dare to balance the

budget?

It could well be that the future business scholar will identify marketings

sclerotic, twisted business decision-making system as the biggest weakness of

all. Put simply an early 19th century business concept cobbled together by a

small number of business men cannot properly function for the West as the

number one business method for the 21st century. To-day it can be said that

Advertising and Marketing are an anachronism which is why so many articles

abound as to the way advertising is going. Nowadays some senior executives call

trust the scarcest resource of all and marketing enhances such an attitude!

It has been said that Marketers are stuck in a world between the old rules

and the new rules. To deal with the new rules of changing media, technology and

consumer behaviour, many marketers delegate emerging marketing solutions to a

handful of external partners or internal 'experts'. In doing so, they have

enabled the rest of the organisation to behave much like it did ten years ago,

clinging to the old rules!

This marketing crisis is an opportunity to call advertising to account.

The professional role of Marketing and Advertising Management has been

undermined by the total lack of true accountability and other problems that link

this management to the short-term interests of the advertising agencies

themselves. Maximum profit seeking has increasingly taken precedence over

long-term accountability together with a complete understanding, and

implementation, of the communications process!

Are we at all surprised that the current advertising crisis has come this far? Let's be honest: the

warning voices have been around for a long time, the fact that these warnings were consistently

ignored has now brought about the near collapse of the system.We live in a

schizophrenic world and we will be held accountable for our sins.The reasons

why the writing on the wall was ignored has to do with the denying of

inconvenient truths and also because nobody really felt responsible or capable

of action. The advertising/marketing bodies either lacked the authority or

the competency to deal with the challenges of a global advertising system that

has gone horribly wrong! Furthermore, individual advertising agencies have

not shown the initiative to address a fundamentally flawed and restrictive

process of communication together with a total lack of accountability.

Additionally none of the advertising agencies and the media have shown any

evidence of long term vision. Additionally the regulatory functions, such as

they are have been abused by many within the industry, consciously or

unconsciously to the great detriment of Clients and their Customers. The

professional role of Marketing and Advertising Management has been undermined by

the total lack of true accountability and other problems that link this

management to the short-term interests of the advertising agencies

themselves.

It can be said with confidence that Interactive Communication,



properly executed, will emerge as the New Advertising and is proven to be far more effective. It allows Clients to save huge amounts of money, it will also allow Clients to make very accurate decisions upon where to position their brand(s) in fact it will allow Clients to emerge highly successful and arguably healthier than ever before!

Interactive is a bold call for a new Advertising. The phrase "In the Clients interest" so out of fashion for a long time has returned and Clients can only benefit from it!

It also frees the best marketing people to abandon their claim that "We have the best creativity" Interactive Communication proves to Clients the utter banality of that claim, Creativity has never been the sole criterion for the success, or otherwise, of marketing communication.

Advertising-as-usual is long on self-promotion and back stabbing and very short on talent & personal responsibility. Advertising-as-usual is so conservative that it lacks entrepreneurial talent and it will only be through new ideas and new companies that marketing will pull through from from their travails.

However that does not mean that you should rush onto Social Media - all things in moderation wont hurt you, Social Media, properly executed, belongs in the media mix! However the problem is that we are in this evolutionary period, nothing is factually based, it's all new with the sole exception of interactive communication!

　

　

We becoming more and more distracted by the various media that continues to proliferate under advertising's largess.

As advertisers spend more, they extend media's restless tentacles, thus

distracting us to the point where marketers have to spend yet more to regain our

attention (if they ever had it in the first place!)

All the mounting evidence that advertising doesn't work goes totally ignored.

Recently it was written that most marketing (theory and practice) is wish

driven. The work on advertising effectiveness convincingly proves that there is

no evidence that advertising persuades anybody to do anything; advertising can

only be a 'weak' force.

The sad thing is that all this evidence is studiously ignored by many

sections of the marketing community, resulting in the terrible situation we are

witnessing to-day. Many goals set in marketing are unrealistic. They are

therefore doomed to failure from the start. Such romantic marketing dreams

include sustained growth, brand differentiation, persuasive advertising, and are

totally unrealistic!

Now, in addition, we have the craven-image of dotcom dementia 2.0

The problem is that the articles of faith among those who conquered their

fear, denial, blind faith and desperate attachments to the status quo

("Advertising works") now face the gathering reality of the chaos scenario! With

most advertising these days where is one iota of information which will

sell?

Mostly they don't tell consumers anything that matters, instead leaving that

heavy lifting to other, less sexy marketing efforts.

It can be said with confidence that Interactive Communication,

properly executed, will emerge as the New Advertising and is proven to be far more effective. It allows Clients to save huge amounts of money, it will also allow Clients to make very accurate decisions upon where to position their brand(s) in fact it will allow Clients to emerge highly successful and arguably healthier than ever before!

Interactive is a bold call for a new Advertising. The phrase "In the Clients interest" so out of fashion for a long time has returned and Clients can only benefit from it!

It also frees the best marketing people to abandon their claim that "We have the best creativity" Interactive Communication proves to Clients the utter banality of that claim, Creativity has never been the sole criterion for the success, or otherwise, of marketing communication.

Advertising-as-usual is long on self-promotion and back stabbing and very short on talent & personal responsibility. Advertising-as-usual is so conservative that it lacks entrepreneurial talent and it will only be through new ideas and new companies that marketing will pull through from from their travails.

However that does not mean that you should rush onto Social Media - all things in moderation wont hurt you, Social Media, properly executed, belongs in the media mix! However the problem is that we are in this evolutionary period, nothing is factually based, it's all new with the sole exception of interactive communication!

　

　

Several decades of non accountability has camouflaged severe structural flaws in Marketing.



What is constantly missing though is a vision for advertisings'

future. There exists now an opportunity to reshape the landscape of Marketing

and Advertising. But it requires boldness and courage! Competent

brand advertising generally does not fail, but people's

exotic expectations of its outcome do. Advertising lacks consistently dynamic

effects, once again because of competition. Only Interactive Communication

consistently persuades people to change what they feel and buy!

The danger of offending the viewer is where advertisers in the modern age run

into trouble: in a desperate attempt to grab the consumers' attention,

advertisers are creating what is known as ad clutter. It's a non-stop blitz

of advertising messages; everywhere we turn we're saturated with advertising

messages trying to get our attention. We've gone from being exposed to about 500

ads a day back in the 1970's to as many as 5,000 a day today. It seems like the

goal of most marketers and advertisers nowadays is to cover every blank space

with some kind of brand logo or a promotion or an advertisement, Marketers have

found a way to use parking stripes, postage stamps and floors, even buses and

buildings, it's all an assault on the senses.

We have to screen it out because we simply can't absorb that much

information. We can't process that much data,and so no surprise, consumers are

reacting negatively to the kind of marketing blitz; the kind of super saturation

of advertising that they're exposed to on a daily basis." The conundrum

for modern day marketers is how to cut through the clutter without alienating

the consumer. All of this marketing saturation that's going on is creating

this kind of arms race between marketers where they have to up the ante the next

time out because their competitors have upped the ante the last time they were

out, and the only way you can win is to have more saturation -- be more creative; be more

outrageous. Result? More clutter and less accountability! That's why we need interactive

marketing Communication.

　

Wake Up Marketing - Face the 21st Century


　

　

　

Your innovation-averse culture must go!

Marketing and advertising are on the slide. When will these once great

businesses confront reality and fight back? Because at the moment both

Advertising and Marketing have become innovation-averse cultures! Both

professions are risk-averse, innovation-averse and antipathetic to new

ideas.

Worse than that they are totally lacking in accountability because those

given responsibility do not have the requisite authority and knowledge to

discharge it.

So what's behind the decline and fall? Most certainly a sclerotic marketing

system that doesn't have the power to re-examine the need for massive

re-evaluation of the process of advertising and marketing. It's antiquated,

early 19th Century concepts do not work, (if they ever did!) they still do not

have any true accountability.

It may be that the future scholar identifies Advertising's sclerotic, twisted

concepts of communication as the biggest business weakness of all.Simply put.

An early 19th century concept cobbled together by a small number of

opportunistic men cannot properly function for the Western world at the

beginning of the 21st century. The current system of Advertising &

Marketing is an anachronism.

Among business people cynicism about advertising ability to deliver grow, now

with the advent of the Internet, this can only increase this cynicism.

The twin challenges to advertisings' 60-year old hegemony are enormous. The

first is a total misunderstanding of the word "communication" and a misplaced

belief that "creativity" is the sole criteria for the success or otherwise of

advertisings ability to sell products and services. Secondly there is a broad

global trend towards the internet together with the frightening inability of

advertising to be totally accountable, in the case of the latter just how long

can this stupidity last? Just when does Marketing dare to balance the

budget?

It could well be that the future business scholar will identify marketings

sclerotic, twisted business decision-making system as the biggest weakness of

all. Put simply an early 19th century business concept cobbled together by a

small number of business men cannot properly function for the West as the

number one business method for the 21st century. To-day it can be said that

Advertising and Marketing are an anachronism which is why so many articles

abound as to the way advertising is going. Nowadays some senior executives call

trust the scarcest resource of all and marketing enhances such an attitude!

It has been said that Marketers are stuck in a world between the old rules

and the new rules. To deal with the new rules of changing media, technology and

consumer behaviour, many marketers delegate emerging marketing solutions to a

handful of external partners or internal 'experts'. In doing so, they have

enabled the rest of the organisation to behave much like it did ten years ago,

clinging to the old rules!