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Why Marketers Are Reluctant to Move Away from Traditional Marketing Strategies

“The future of advertising is radically different from its past. The struggle for control of attention, creativity measurements and platforms will reshape the advertising value chain and shift the balance of power. And, as in previous disruptive cycles, the future cannot be extrapolated from the past.”

- from The End of Advertising as We Know It, IBM Global Services, 2007

Today, most companies are still using traditional marketing approaches that they may have been using since the middle of the 20th century.  There are several reasons for this:

• Companies are set up to sell products, not to provide relevant and valuable information to customers and prospects.
• Companies have well-worn marketing paths that are easy to follow.  Going off the beaten path into uncharted territory is intimidating.
• Companies have strong relationships with media partners that may go back decades.  It's not easy to break those relationships by pursuing a brand-new content marketing strategy.
• The reduced effectiveness of traditional marketing may have occurred so slowly that no alarm bells have gone off within your organization.
• Many companies aren’t measuring their marketing, so they aren’t even sure what is and what is not effective.
• Many companies lack both the right people and the right processes to implement a new kind of marketing.
• Many businesses are reluctant to abandon traditional marketing tactics for what they may believe to be unproven content marketing or new media practices.
• Most companies lack content marketing role models from whom they can learn best practices.
• Some companies place very little value in marketing versus other aspects of the organization (operations, product development). Little do they know, that every part of the organization is affected by (or actually is) marketing.

In order for a company to alter their mindset toward one of new media or content marketing, they need one of a few things to happen:

• Business gets so bad that they start trying new things.
• Voluntary or involuntary turnover creates new thinking in the organization.
• A culture change in sparked in the organization, through an internal champion, external customer demands, or the merging of a new business culture through an actual merger or buyout.

The point is that there is great opportunity. There is opportunity for small businesses who can make these changes and adaptations faster than their larger competitive set. There is also opportunity for medium and large organizations who can make decisions based on how their customers want to engage with them, not on what they've done in the past.

The IBM white paper that led off this post has an interesting set of questions to ask marketing professionals that speaks directly to the drastic changes that have taken place just in the last few years.

• Will advertisers still need a traditional agency? If so, in what capacity?
• Will traditional programmers lose significant revenue to the Internet, mobile device providers and interactive home portals?
• Will consumers reject outright the concept of interruption marketing in the future?
• Will consumer receptivity vary by medium (for example, mobile devices versus home-oriented devices)?
• Will consumers see value in advertising as a trade-off for content?
• To what extent will advertising inventory be sold through open platforms?
• Do advertising industry players have the customer analytics needed to better understand and reach target customers?
• Are companies organized correctly to create, market and distribute cross-platform content?

Most everyone has an answer to the above questions - but noone knows for sure if they will be right. All we can do is see what is happening and talk to our customers. That said, the more I interact with marketing and publishing professionals, the more I realize that the old rules don't apply anymore. What is going on right now is a revolution like nothing we've ever seen. The opportunity is great for those companies that buy into this.

Some companies think that the Internet is just another way to market. It's those companies that are in trouble.

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Related Articles:

• Seth Godin: "Content Marketing Is the Only Marketing Left" and 10 New Marketing Lessons
• Corporate Content Will Take Over Media as We Know It
• Six Key Principles to Content Promotion

The Big Idea Won't Fix Your Marketing...think Small and Frequent

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The December 3rd issue of BusinessWeek featured an article about Saatchi & Saatchi CEO Kevin Roberts, and the company's struggles to significantly grow revenue. More than anything, this article discusses the transformation that Saatchi and other large agencies are undergoing to stay relevant.

Times have clearly changed, and agencies, as well as traditional media companies, are struggling to find their way. The article states:

"For most of the 20th century the so-called creatives ruled the industry. They didn't worry about where or how an ad ran. They didn't analyze market niches. They were about Big Ideas that would connect a brand, emotionally, with millions of consumers. Today, you might say, the Small Idea is ascendant. Ads are targeted at individuals or communities of consumers. That's because the media universe is so fragmented--into blogs, social networks, television, magazines, and so on--that finding the right medium is fast becoming more important than the message itself. "

Couple of takeaways here. First, most agencies and creatives I know still search and believe in the big idea. I believe all humans do, to some extent. We believe and have faith that all our problems (and in this case, communication challenges) have one great and almighty solution. Sometimes, they do. But in media and marketing, this very rarely happens. Today, it's never just one big idea.

Look at it this way. If a heart attack victim survives and is on the road to recovery, it's not one thing that brings her back to health. It's many little things, accomplished and executed over many days, weeks and months. It's eating better, exercising regularly, maintaining a more positive outlook on life, smiling more...and so on and so forth. If you did just one of these, it would be ineffective. If you did all of them, just once, that's no good either. No "big idea" fix.

Now look at today's marketing. If you have a customer communication challenge, is one big idea going to fix that? Not in the least. It won't be fixed by a glam-packed 30-second spot, or print campaign or even the integrated strategy itself.

Here's the solution for 99% of the businesses out there: It's not one big idea but a series of small, ongoing conversations with your customers, distributed through the media your customers use. This requires intimate knowledge of your customer, and a determination to leave your customer, on each occasion, in better shape than you originally found them. Instead of one big bang, it's one brick per day that over the course of weeks, months and years builds a house, a true brand relationship with your customer.

This is done by communicating great content to your customer that helps them become, not necessarily emotionally tied to you, but intellectually tied to your brand. Educating your customers is probably the single greatest gift you could give them.

Second point, specific to this quote: "...finding the right medium is fast becoming more important than the message itself." I'm not sure anyone really has the answer for this, but I'd position that it's neither. The most important is finding the right customer. The customer dictates both the medium and the message. Without the perfect concoction of both, the communication effort will fail.

To some extent we are all suckers for the big fix. Who really wants to create ongoing, educational content for customers anyhow? It's too much work. Yes, it may be too much work, but it sure does work.

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Related Articles:

• 42 Content-Building Ways to Attract and Retain Buyers
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Corporate Content Will Take Over Media As We Know It

Yesterday I had a nice email exchange with a good friend and colleague regarding the rise and influence of content created by corporations. His belief was that traditional media will continue to be the main informational source for consumers and business professionals.

Specifically, he was responding to my blog post that stated, "The future of content around the globe will rest, not in the hands of the traditional press, but in the hands of businesses."

His statement back to me was that "media consumers are savvy, and are wary of the agendas of the sponsors of content. Traditional media will continue to have an important role as the independent arbiters of relevance, taste, etc."

Where I agree with him is that traditional media will always have a role...a very important one at that. BUT, the majority of the content we consume will NOT come from the traditional, unbiased press.

Here's why:

1. It's getting easier every day to ignore advertising placed along side traditional media. For example, take a read through this article by Greg Verdino on the 30-second spot where he questions a recent Online Publishers Association Study:

"...where's the study that helps marketers, agencies and media companies navigate a path to true innovation in online video? Where are the questions about branded content, the integration of product placements into online video and the use of next-generation video interactivity, including hotspots, overlays and telescoping? Where are the findings that justify the development of new video ad models that don't rely upon intercepting consumers when they just want to watch some content?"

These are the questions the Greg feels need to be answered as the 30-second spot continues to be deleted through TiVo.

Corporations must continue to be part of the content, since, to my friend's point, media consumers are savvy enough to ignore and delete the ads that surround the content they really want. Corporate media innovation is just getting started. Smart corporations will find away to deliver great content that is consumed in mass quantities because, frankly, they won't have any other choice.

Take two other examples. I can read a digital magazine and skip all the ads in it. I can get RSS feeds of my favorite business articles without looking at one ad. Technology will continue to help us ignore traditional advertising...so, what's a business to do?

2. Tomorrow's consumer looks at corporate content and the traditional press differently today than ever before. This article by Martha Spizziri for ASBPE Boston on the reader of tomorrow is eye-opening.

Boston University professor John Carroll discussed the four distinct characteristics of today's students when it comes to media. Of particular interest was #4, "They don't understand the value of a free press," Carroll said. "They don't get the role of a watchdog. They don't trust the press, they don't like the press, and they don't believe the press. ... They don't understand why the First Amendment is important. They don't understand why anyone would go to jail to protect a source."

Carroll goes on to state: "They don't understand that MTV is a series of commercials interrupted by ads. They don't understand that their cell phones are running them, and not vice versa. When you ask them who's going to report on the conditions at Walter Reed Hospital, it doesn't occur to them [to think about that], because they don't know about the Walter Reed story."

This should cause some concern, but if you really digest what he is saying, the future consumers "may" (dare I say) trust corporate content more than the traditional media. It is corporations they relate to with their iPods, Nikes, and Sean John...not the WSJ or Times.

3. It is corporations, and not the traditional press, that have the financial resources to go out and create the best content. Now this is not a certainty, but don't tell me that Google or Microsoft (MSNBC?) couldn't start a media property tomorrow. Frankly, eBay should be buying up industry trade publications left and right (a built-in buyer/seller community).

Over the last decade, I've seen more and more traditional journalists "cross the line" and create content or perform research for corporations. Where in the past this was looked down upon...not anymore. Hey, writing for Microsoft, Cisco or Parker Hannifin looks good on a resume. So not only do corporations have the financial bucks to go out and get the best in research and editorial, the best journalists like it.

In summary, technological advances, consumer behavior and financial resources will culminate and create the "age of corporate media" as the dominant media we consume, day in and day out. Businesses will get better at creating great content, and great content is what consumers want. Consumers ultimately will not care where it comes from or (even worse for traditional-media types) they may actually "prefer" content from corporations.

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Publishers Are Now Agencies

Louise Story of The New York Times just penned "Publishers Creating Their Own In-House Ad Agencies." Couple of key thoughts I have on this story:

1.  This is pretty much old news.  At least on the business-to-business side, this has been going on in significant way since at least the late 90's.  Penton Media really got on the bandwagon offering these services in the early 2000's. That said...kudos to Louise for focusing on it.  This trend continues to affect how marketers can find good content partners for their marketing programs.
2.  This continuing trend is just another nail in the ad agencies coffin. Marketing services, formerly the domain of advertising agencies, is now a must for all publishers and interactive groups.
3.  Obviously, the publishers mentioned in this article (Conde Nast and Hearst) are smart for what they are doing...but they still have an old publisher's mentality by using custom solutions as a value add. What happens to the "charging for cost only" model when clients don't want the media anymore, they just want the custom solutions.  Meredith, and most other content marketing providers, are in a much better position when that day happens. Part of showing value to the client for these types of services is in the way we price it as well.