In the ancient world, primitive people knelt at altars and prayed to imaginary Gods for good fortune, a bountiful harvest, a pox on an enemy’s house, victory in battle or whatever. This was a matter of faith, not fact. They simply believed.
In our modern world, marketers pray to their own imaginary Gods. They call them “Influentials,” anonymous people with godlike influence, who are about as real as the ones on Olympus or Valhalla.
Nevertheless, the idea has caught on. Marketers have become positively smitten with it. After all, why pay to reach millions if you can get even greater effect from just a few special ones? As we shall see, it’s a misguided, quixotic notion with little or no evidence to support it. In fact, serious inquiry into the matter finds the notion completely baseless.
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The future has a nice ring to it. It is fairly busting with promise. We can let our dreams run wild, imagine that some of the bullshit we currently have to endure will subside and that cool new things will replace boring old ones.
And, for the most part, that’s been true. Despite some novel challenges that each generation needs to face, life does get better, healthier, more prosperous.
A while back, I argued that we’re currently undergoing a radical shift toward design. Today, I’d like to take a longer view and make a more wide ranging argument: that the march of civilization itself has, in actuality, been a long march of design. Further, it’s becoming clear that as design takes over, we’ll have to rethink how we produce prosperity.
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Clients often ask, “How can we get our organization to buy into digital marketing?” It’s a very telling question for two reasons.
Firstly, it underlines that, even at this point in the game, many big organizations have not bought in. Secondly, it implies that digital marketing is somehow separate from regular marketing, and that a cultural divide is the reason for slow adoption.
Organizations adopt marketing strategies for one reason and one reason only: They see value to their business. For digital marketers to be successful, we must be able to address standard marketing problems, rather than lament that clients aren’t far-sighted enough to see the new possibilities. The onus is on us, not them.
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Plato and Aristotle. Caesar and Pompey. Jefferson and Hamilton. Einstein and Bohr. History has, in large part, been formed through the tension between rivalled doppelgangers.
Such is the case with the information age. From the beginning, the computer industry has been driven by two towering figures: Steve Jobs and Bill Gates.
Since their “boy wonder” days, they have toppled industry giants, changed the world and made billions for themselves. They were more than pioneers, but archetypes who competed. not just for market share, but for the zeitgeist itself. Although both have left the scene, their story will continue to play out. To see what’s ahead, it helps to look back.
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“Just put it on the box,” has been a constant refrain of marketers for decades and not without reason. In the post-war era, television has been the workhorse of the consumer culture. Nothing has been more effective across categories and timelines as the 30 second spot.
So when technology made online video possible, it seemed as if a new day had dawned. There would not be just a “box,” but a “three screen world,” in which online video would rule.
Strangely though, the opposite seemed to occur. TV has actually gained both audience and ad share in recent years. Therefore, many traditional media advocates have closed the book. However, that’s premature. Today, online video is finally coming into its own.
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Digeratti are an unusual bunch. Branded with distinctive facial hair configurations and fueled by caffeine, they run around coding, pitching, inventing and envisioning a bold new future.
It’s hard to imagine any context in which they could be called slow. Yet, they move at a snail’s pace compared to those seeking to master the ultimate code: DNA.
Since the existence of the code itself was discovered in 1953, it has heralded a new age in life sciences. It enabled us to approach questions of nature and nurture, genetic disease, cancer and others in a systematic way. More recently, genetics and information technology have joined forces to propel innovation forward at a mind-blowing pace.
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Youth, many say, is wasted on the young. We elders admire their energy, but pity their lack of knowledge and experience. As Cicero said, “Rashness belongs to youth; prudence to old age.”
With each new generation, we find new names for our youth. I was a proud member of “Generation X” and therefore a slacker. Now we have the “Millennials” who are said to seek instant gratification and demand to be spoon-fed a sense of purpose.
Whatever you call them, since the time of Socrates we have mourned the irreverence of our juniors, their lack of respect for posterity, propriety and their reluctance to receive our wisdom. Yet, all to often, it is we who forget that much of the wisdom we have to give is the result of past blasphemy evolved into doctrine.
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Early in my career, I got to know a guy who left his position as Managing Director of a prestigious network ad agency to become a consultant. He called himself a “strategist.”
Boy was I impressed! “He must be really smart,” I thought, to have people pay him just to tell them what to do. However, over the years (and, ironically, after becoming a strategist myself), I’ve become decidedly less enamored.
I’m not alone either. While strategists have multiplied, they have struggled to remain relevant. They are often seen as grandstanders and blowhards, thinkers rather than doers, who are out of touch with operational reality while quick to take credit for operational successes. It doesn’t have to be this way, but strategists need to get a better grip on reality.
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We’ve entered a new marketing paradigm. Social media, co-creation and mobility are all part of it, but the greater whole is a new understanding of how consumers and brands interact in a digital world.
As I’ve written before, paradigm shifts do not automatically nullify time honored principles, but must adapt old wisdom to new facts. Therefore we must not only innovate forward, but integrate back.
Therefore, the post-promotional age does not eschew promotion, but embraces it. Firms are in business for profit and ignoring that fact risks either throwing money away on silly “conversations” or alienating consumers by patronizing them. However, brand centricity is giving way to consumer centricity and that makes all the difference.
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When Steve Jobs passed away last week, we lost more than a legend. He completely changed the way we see technology. Out went clunky gray machines and in came beautiful, friendly devices.
He leaves an astounding legacy, including the company he co-founded, got kicked out of, returned to and ultimately came to personify. It’s no wonder that Apple shares dropped 5% when he resigned in August.
On the one hand, he leaves the company firing on all cylinders, with no debt, a market value of almost $400 billion and a product line that makes competitors go green with envy. However, as Jim Collins has noted, companies with charismatic leaders tend to falter after their departure. Here’s a quick overview of the pitfalls and the opportunities.
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