The Marketing Apocalype - A thoughtstarter

My experience in the US has given me a new profound insight into the world of marketing. Looking around in this mass of consumerism, I see opportunities... but rather opportunities that require marketers, wherever you stand in terms of ATL, Digital, Activations etc, to take cognisance of a critical truth about our business reality.

Marketing as we know it is dead. As a doornail. As a doorknob.

We live in a world of unbelievable consumer choice, a world of unbelievable consumer power. Touching the customer at every point of their journey is not going to work anymore as consumer's are becoming overwhelmed and disinterested with marketing messages. They've evolved and become adept at tuning us out. No one cares about your marketing anymore. Brands that have not accepted the reality of the evolving consumer. Consumers are becoming hostile to brands, and are finding ways to monetise/publicise their own content on platforms such as Pheed.com. Direct Mail is pretty much finished, and E-Mail marketers are going to have to look to new ways to navigate around the new Gmail format that almost instantaneously places all marketing messages into a tabbed folder (also known as a spam folder). Getting the customers attention has never been more challenging and it's only getting harder.

This total apathy of the customer tied into the fact that marketers have to go to new levels of spin doctoring to prove marketing R.O.I to business executives, and are not succeeding. A 2011 study from the Fournaise Group have shown that a majority of CEOs (73%) feel that marketers do not have business credibility. This is a damning insight that has ramifications for marketers everywhere.

So if businesses don't see the value of marketing, and consumer's are tuning out of marketing messages, what can we as marketers do? Is the marketing apocalypse nigh?

(To be continued....)

A Workation in NYC #1

So I'm currently visiting in New York City on a 2 week work experience hosted by Wunderman New York! So far, so amazing. New York really feels like the centre of the world, and its a real experience to be immersed in the daily experience of this amazing city.

Here are some quick snaps:

An interesting poster I discovered upon entering the Wunderman New York Office, and something that I think ties up with the role of the strategist in a modern agency. One needs to be gutsy, brave and speak truth in a way that makes sense for clients.

My desk in New York. Was really cool to see that they had gone to the effort of printing my name out, and had left me a couple of cool gifts, which I will tell you about below....












I got a Wunderman water bottle, a purple ink pen, branded USB stick and Sunscreen with a purple bike lock! Very cool - really chuffed at the effort the guys went to in order to make me feel welcome!

The View from my desk. P-I-M-P-I-N-G.













A Nokia Billboard in Chelsea, which I spotted on my way to a meeting at Google's Office at the Chelsea Market. Cool to see Nokia trying to put its name out there, but interesting to discover how small a player they are in the US market.








A cool picture of PSY and Google Chairman Eric Schmidt. Can you spot Stephen Colbert as Captain America?

Google New York has a slide! This is officially the best thing ever. They also have razors (scooters) that people use to get across the office space. Really a super cool office!