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....)