Marketing is my métier. I recently attended the Canadian Marketing Association’s annual conference in Toronto. It was a little scary. With a group of just 500 or so people in attendance, the event was a shadow of its former self. 10 years ago, the audience would have measured in the thousands.
Have all the marketers died?
Obviously, the answer is “No”. I think they’ve just changed their spots and become other things in addition to being marketers. The very word “marketing” seems to have become associated with something suspect called “traditional advertising”. And traditional promotion, too.
All that said, I’m pleased to say I got a lot out of the CMA event. I was impressed by how we examined our predicament – objectively, and with nary a dash of hubris.
And I learned there are now just two things to put your money on in the world of marketing communication:
- Content. Basically, you can no longer talk about nothing and/or make fanciful claims about your product and expect the consumer to be interested.
- Deployment. The science of Deployment and its handmaiden, Analytics, is irrefutable. Ignore it at your peril. Put it to work, and get your message precisely to whom you want, when they want it, on the device of their choosing… and get multiples on your multiples by initiating conversations.
Of course, the two things work together to deliver an exponential effect. Give people meaningful, relevant content they are genuinely interested in + distribute it in the manner that is most convenient to them… and measure the hell out of it! That’s marketing today!
It seems to me that the CMA needs to be reborn – or, at least, revitalized. Those who organized the conference did well by us all, I think. However, I’m not so sure about the pillars on which the organization stands. I’m not sure that they do well by us all anymore.
We need to decide whither marketing before marketing withers.
We’ve all read the stats about the generation situation. Winning the birthdate lottery has always been (and likely always will be) the rightful inheritance of the Boomers (1946 – 1962), who are now, of course, the Zoomers.