I guess I could be called a radical when it comes work. I've said on a few occasions how I think ways of working are hugely out of touch. I think this extends to departments too.
When selling first started, it circled around monopolies and trying to grab early adopters.
Then the Industrial Revolution happened and everyone had their place.
Post-war, we're into mass production and rabid consumerism.
We went from "Buy. Buy. Buy!" to "We're better than the others" to "this will get you laid".
With consumerism came profit before people and the exploitation that bred.
That means creating premium products with a needlessly short shelf-life.
It means cutting corners on quality of customer service.
It means riddling everything with Ts&Cs and "computer says no" tactics.
It means tax avoidance, sweat shops and government corruption.
The bottom fell out of big brand and marketing.
Corporates we evil, with their fat cat bonuses and dodgy golf course deals.
The BBC's Watchdog and Which? would expose unfair or illegal practises.
People stopped trusting that chain shop on the high street or the multinational with the sexy ads.
No longer did people gloat about the suit they got from House of Fraser or the new fangled TV from Bang & Olfson.
Yuppies were dead and the internet took over.
People started to grow a conscience and get into exorbitant debt for stuff they didn't need.
Brands didn't matter anymore.
As everyone became savvy and technology became king, the world changed. And rapidly.
They say marketing is the first to go in a recession. It's expensive and if the objective is to save money, a company would rather shelve marketing than halt or alter production.
The market place got noisier and competition fiercer, marketing became an essential tool to make sure the tills still ring in bad times.
Change hasn't gone far enough.
A lot of interaction, in nearly all markets, is digital. Marketing attempted to highjack this change by grabbing at social media and content.
However, it's becoming increasingly clear that they've muddied these normally clear waters.
More and more people are opting for ad blockers.
Social media are changing their algorithms.
Consumers are once again beginning to mistrust ecommerce because marketing has begun polishing turds and driving a hard sell where it's not wanted.
Content marketing shouldn't exist, it should just be customer, business and product information to help people make decisions, bring traffic or aid trust in a brand.
Social media ads shouldn't exist, just let your social media manager have conversations. It does more for a brand that fake influencer content or annoying ads, banners and pop-ups that block what you actually want to look at. Or just interrupt your feed completely unsolicited.
CRM is still working its magic, regardless of what industry experts say, people are still opening emails to get deals, offers and news from the brands they want to know about.
We're finding that more and more marketing agencies are being absorbed by digital agencies, as they have valuable customer insight. But from experience, marketers know nothing about how digital works; from the journey to the experience.
More and more agencies are splitting off into SEO, content and CRM.
There is definitely a place for traditional ATL marketing, but it needs to stay in within that particular media landscape.
Analytics will stop being detrimental to creative.
Customer experiences will be cleaner, simpler and convenient.
Content will be trusted.
Businesses should now be customer experience first (digital or physical) and marketing should fall out of that.
Marketing teams should no longer be leading product development or digital execution.
They've held the cards too long and let's face it, they've not done a good job.
Now, it's not just marketing that has the numbers, digital has data and could access wider market data.
Marketing is dead, long live digital. Sure, it's a leap, but it's what people want and can you afford to be anything else in this busy, fickle world?
