Marketing is dead. Now you know. Sorry. We had fun. We have done some great things together, but the party is over. Now get your stuff from your desk. Leave the iPad.
About once every month I see a new blog post somewhere titled Marketing is dead. Just Google the phrase and you get 355.000 hits, right between the eyes. This month its Bill Lee declaring in his Harvard Business Review blog post that it is all history.
Ironically, Bill just used a very old marketing trick and said something is dead to attract the reader with the goal to raise Awareness about his knowledge and business to hopefully create Interest, Desire and, who knows, Action. Blog posts with appealing titles can be useful marketing tools to have prospects paying attention to your services.
If you actually read the article, Marketing doesnt appear to be dead at all:
Traditional marketing may be dead, but the new possibilities of peer influence-based, community-oriented marketing, hold much greater promise for creating sustained growth.
What Bill is really saying is that the marketing concepts, departments, processes and content need to change and adapt to customer needs to remain successful. Business as usual I would say.
What is not usual is that the need to change seems to come as a shock to some marketers. Although its very human, resistance to change is not a positive characteristic if you want to be a good marketer. And this time the change will be big, so you have to be good.
I fully agree that traditional marketing is dying and the marketing department as we know it is walking with a limp. I believe in a marketing function which serves and facilitates brand and product related dialogues, be it internal or external. This means creating relevant content, easy access, whenever, wherever. It will be data driven, based on an integrated technology platform, operated, serviced and maintained by a dedicated Marketing Operations team.
Marketers need to reinvent their role and facilitate new ways of marketing which go far beyond their former domain and comfort zones. But as long as there are people who want to get anything done or sold, there will be marketing in some way or form. It will just be different.
Marketing is not dead and I don’t have 7 reasons. I just wanted to get your attention to tell you to stop reading blog posts with dead or 7 in the title and get back to work. Your company needs to change to meet the ever changing customer needs and is up to you to drive it. By the way, now I got your attention… need help? . .
