Crisis? What crisis? Do marketing directors know that marketing is changing?

I’ve read seven books in the past six months that collectively convince me that marketing is changing. For the record, the books are:

The Tipping Point
The Influentials
Permission Marketing
The World is Flat
Purple Cow
Naked Conversations
The Long Tail

The Tipping Point describes how new ideas and products are rapidly adopted through a network of influential individuals, largely by word-of-mouth. The Influentials makes a more detailed examination of a similar concept, and how to influence these influencers.

Permission Market promotes customer engagement and collaboration in marketing, as opposed to “Interruption Marketing”, which is the equivalent of shouting at people (may get your attention but not conducive to selling something).

The World is Flat record the huge changes in the interrelationships between buyers and suppliers from an economic viewpoint.

Purple Cow is Seth Godin’s rant at marketing - “Traditional approaches are now obsolete. One hundred years of marketing thought are gone.” Instead, you, your product and your marketing must be remarkable.

In Naked Conversations, blogging is the focus, but some interesting tidbits of marketing landscape changes are thrown in. for example, Richard Edelman (PR big cheese) is quoted as saying that “traditional marketing is in its twilight years.”

The Long Tail charts the demise of the mass market and the opportunity for infinite, though smaller, market segments.

My reading was supplemented by a bunch of academic research on the efficacy (lack thereof) of advertising, PR and other traditional marketing techniques (email me for sources if you’re interested…).

It seems there is a consensus in the marketing world that, as economic, culture and commerce change, traditional techniques don’t work any more, and that approaches to market must also change.

Here’s my point – has anyone told the marketing directors and managers in the technology sector?

There are a host of new marketing techniques that should be stimulating the marketing profession: blogging, conversational marketing, word-of-mouth, influencer marketing, permission marketing, and so on.

Why then are marketing heads doing what they’ve always done?

Here’s an example: Intel are currently running an ad on prime time TV. Why? Because Intel is a big brand and that’s what big brands do, right? But unless you’re about to cobble together your PC from individual components, you’ll never buy an Intel product directly. Never, ever.

Who influences your decision to buy an Intel-based PC? Not a glitzy TV ad. It’s more than likely to be Dell’s component purchaser in Ireland. Or your technology support team. Or the sales guy in PC World. Or a chum that just bought a PC last month.

Now how do you influence these folk? Certainly not by running a TV ad. Creativity and new approaches are required. But are marketing heads listening? Or happy to spend their budget on "brand awareness" and other unmeasurables?

It’s not just Intel (sorry to pick on them). The standard budgeting process for most technology firms is to copy last year’s plan and make minor tweaks. -2% for PR this year, +2% for events. The usual 30% for telemarketing.

Einstein defined insanity as doing the same things and expecting different results. Why are marketers doing the same stuff and yet expecting better results?

All of this rant would be irrelevant if things were going well for technology firms. The last time I looked, though, our industry is growing at 5-6%, including GDP growth of 3.3% and inflation of 2% - roughly 0% growth in real terms. And IDC predicts little change to 2009.

So if I was a marketing director, I’d be focused on drumming up business, enabling my sales colleagues and trying to steal market share from everywhere.

I’d do something different. I’d at least do something different from my competitors. And unless last year was a stunning financial success, I would start with a new plan.

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