Marketing is Dead ... Long Live Marketing!
Responding to my post on "What's Holding Back Corporate Blogging?", Stowe Boyd offers some valuable insight into the myopia of most business executives who see blogging solely as a new marketing vehicle:
"Corporate types steadfastedly refuse to believe that the post-marketing world is better ... blogging is considered an adjunct to marketing, 'just another channel' to carry messages, slightly recast perhaps, to one 'segment' of the 'market.'"
This tendency to define blogging as merely a new-fangled marketing vehicle -- and the business media are just as guilty of this -- has always bugged me, too. Indeed, 3-5 years from now, blogging's value in marketing may be seen as the least of its many benefits to снять квартиру посуточно от собственника business. Product development, enterprise management, the creation of new businesses -- these functions may turn out to be be the chief beneficiaries of corporate blogging initiatives.
What then, is the role of the marketer in the blog-fueled new commercial epoch in which customers increasingly call the shots in business?
I have some ideas ... chiefly revolving around marketers becoming facilitators of the customer insight and initiative that will increasingly become the fountainhead of enterprise success.
But does Boyd have other ideas? Does anyone?
Or are we truly moving into uncharted territory here?
Comments
Be glad that endless deskfuls of low level copy writers are not swamping the blog world with neck-deep Corp-hype,
masqueraded as "blogs".
I've been wondering when they would discover this.
Soon , I think.
Posted by: Harry Springer | February 1, 2006 06:29 AM
Yeah, probably soon. Except I don't see how it'll be very effective. Phony "buzz" will inevitably be found out as just that -- phony!
At least I hope so.
Posted by: David Kline | February 1, 2006 11:42 AM
David,
"What then, is the role of the marketer in the blog-fueled new commercial epoch in which customers increasingly call the shots in business?"
If one assumes that authenticity and peer-based communication are necessary components to building a dialogue with customers, then I would say the marketer's role is to seek out authentic stories from peer-level professionals within an organization and enable them to blog. Additionally, I think it would be a full-time job to monitor the comment stream and find responses to issues and take innovative ideas to biz unit owners. That alone could occupy an FTE's time.
I think the role goes from being a "planner" as is traditionally used in most of marketing to a "cultivator". Find expressive talent within the organization that can blog effectively. Trudge through the organization and find the person in the back room who uses your own tools in a manner that you request your customers use it. Have him discuss his own experiences with the tools and see if your customers identify with it. And then when the community solidifies around potential innovations, take the case to the execs and biz unit heads and evangelize internally for innovations that your community is telling you to create. If the execs are resistant, take that back to the blog and get your community's response.
It's risky, but is seems to be "The New Way".
Cheers,
TT
Posted by: TechTrader | February 3, 2006 05:09 PM
From planner to cultivator -- that's a great way of putting it, TT.
I wonder if the era of the Database Miners is coming to an end. Will people who can derive relevant qualitative meaning from even a small sampling of customer blog comments soon be of greater value to a business than those who crunch quantitative market research data?
Posted by: David Kline | February 4, 2006 11:08 AM