The tide of marketing is turning at last. After more than 13 years of battling against autistic -- and largely inefficient -- old world marketing techniques and visions, we are now witnessing a few cracks in the ice of top-down marketing strategy. Firstly, Regis Mc Kenna and Geoffrey Moore introduced new ways of dealing with clients mainly in the IT world at the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s. The approach was no longer demographic but behavioural. Secondly, European researchers Badot & Cova wrote their ground-breaking opus entitled "neo-marketing[Fr]" in 1992 (many were to follow) introducing so-called "societal" approaches to marketing and even suggesting we use the term "societing [En]" instead of marketing.
The end of the 1990s were the founding years of -- not only of the Internet but -- the revision of marketing as we know it. Seth Godin taught us that ideas are viruses -- and so are products and services -- hence the newer and more pervasive notions of Buzz marketing. He also re-educated us (yes, I insist, really re-educated) so that we ask permission from our clients to do business with them. Not only was that the early sign that e-mail marketing had to be done differently, but it also sent a clear warning sign to mass marketers that business habits had to change in view of evolving consumer behaviours. 1999 was the kick-off year for the much revered Clue-train manifesto, a source which is still quoted today as the reference for online marketing. And more recently, Tara Hunt has developed the notion of Pinko marketing, a rather weird and politically orientated way of putting that communication power is handed over to the people. Yet, this is very effective when it comes to getting the message across. Even more recently, François Laurent published a new book entitled marketing 2.0[Fr]. Marketing 2.0 is in fact the sequel to his influential blog: marketing is dead[Fr], but what is really striking is that François -- a former marketer at European consumer electronics manufacturer Thomson -- is more widely known as the president of one of the two French associations of marketing: Adetem. Lastly Alain Thys is adding to the bargain by expostulating in his excellent marketing accountability presentation that marketing is not only dead but that it committed suicide in front of its shareholders, clients and even the earth! Nothing less.
No doubt this time, things are moving ahead, even though the proportion of UGC is still low, there is an underlying trend of change, and this is not coming back to what it was before. As it is becoming more and more obvious to all that markets really are conversations there is this requirement for a growing number of enterprises to quickly be in sync with this evolution and gear up to community marketing.
Wow...I haven't heard Pinko Marketing mentioned in years. ;) It didn't go over well with a lot of people because of the name.
Thanks! BTW...I'm now working on the idea that social capital is the key to success in online communities. Whuffie. :)
Posted by: Tara Hunt | July 04, 2008 at 14:25