It’s
heartening to see people from the bastions of old, mass-marketing think start
to embrace the new world order. Of
course they realize that, as in many aspects of life, there is nothing new
under the sun.
Today’s MediaPost
(registration required) features an excellent editorial by J. Walker Smith, the
president of Yankelovich Partners. He
opens with the bold statement that the “Internet has matured into the most
important medium since television”. He
goes on to provide a thoughtful analysis of the reasons why.
“The smartest use of technology is
to leverage this dynamic of participation and engagement. This is what people
want to do in general, and it's what all of the new technologies do so well.
E-commerce is booming, but the biggest trend online is social engagement, and
this will be an essential foundation for e-commerce in the future.”
Both Smith
and Yankelovich recognize that this is the age of consumer resistance, and that
people seek engagement with each other, not brands. In this environment successful marketers will
recognize and embrace this important shift. They’ll stop focusing on controlling the message and the brand. Instead they’ll engage users in everything
from product design to advocacy, to word-of-mouth sales. They’ll learn to listen first and then to
join the conversation, as opposed to trying to dominate it.
Scott Karp
takes this a step further, and asserts that Web 2.0 cannot be successful
without Marketing 2.0.
“If Web 2.0 is going to make any
money, it needs to pursue these new marketing paradigms and not just depend on
Old Media models like selling ads — even Google AdWords feels like its
Marketing 1.2 at best.”
He refers
to Umair Hague’s recent claim that Web 2.0 cannot live up to its enormous
potential unless the “geeks step outside their geekery”. In other words, that they need to embrace one
of the essential premises of marketing (being truly customer-centric); instead
of categorically refuting old-school marketing, they need to change it.
That they're evil doesn't mean you
should ignore them - it means you should be destroying them and then redefining
them: making them less about Madison Ave and BuzzAgent, and more about the deep
2.0 principles that in fact, are revolutionizing the deep economics of many
industries - principles like peer production, gift economies, sharing,
transparency, social capital, anticonsumption, and deep culture.
All of
these recommendations resonate with anyone who’s ever managed a customer
service center or a customer loyalty program. It’s about listening to customer needs, designing products and services
that they actually want, and marketing thing in the context of their
preferences.
Imagine,
being successful by actually giving the people what they want. Now that’s new!
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