Can Marketing afford to be a laggard?

In the fast changing world, could Marketing afford to be a laggard? Here are a few practices that I would certainly like to help transform:

Marketing Department to Marketing Labs

Successful organizations realize that the only way to predict the future is by consistently aiming to create and re-create it. This has to be a continuous and self perpetuating cycle within the organization DNA. Social scientists study lifestyles, emerging trends and product teams “cook” insights in to create breakthrough products and innovations. This would be pretty impossible in conventional organizations where Product R&D develop products for existing markets whereas Google, Apple, 3M & GE create scenarios imagining the future... Future ready brands need to create a “lab environment” for fizzy innovations. Isn’t that how Man created – fire? By accident...!

Customer Mania in the organization

Today every employee and every part of business has the potential to touch the customer at some point along the purchase cycle. From a tweet to a blog to a call center experience, the customer’s expectation of service is just a click away. In such a scenario, the responsibility of owning the customer agenda cannot be with just one function or a handful of employees.

Whilst all organizations claim to keep the customer at the forefront, very few of them actually deep dive and rally every single employee to work for this common cause. Marketing does not own the customer, each employee does and therefore this means a huge transformation in organisations.

What marketing can ensure is that they create a culture and almost a maniacal passion around the subject of customer-centricity. Not just through communication but concrete actions and processes with clear measurable outcomes.

Advertising to Content

If you are a brand that believes in show and tell you are stuck in the 90’s! 
Customers will tend to remember how you made them feel, or how you treated them or the drama that your brand story created in their life. This is where the next dimension of content curation comes in as a golden opportunity to reach across and co-create branded content with customers. 

Research proves that branded content has highest recall and clearly cuts above conventional format advertising. Co-creation is a enriching experience for both – brand and consumer. The give and take results in a potent brand story created by, for and of the consumer, making it easier to accept at not just functional but cognitive and emotional levels, resulting in brand stickiness that is hard to achieve, otherwise.

Content curation is the new holy grail of brands of future. It’s where the sizzle lies.

Social Engagement to Social Business

Digital engagement, just collecting some likes on social platforms, is past. Social networks are today as real as the physical world and marketing department has to view every interaction on social networking as an opportunity for social monetization. The digitally equipped marketers need to understand the socio-commercial behaviour of netizens, collect insights and offer its consumers an opportunity to do business in the social environment they are comfortable in. As Indians latch on to the digital domain communicating, buying, selling and shopping in new ways, it is for brands to lead the way and monetize the user base online progressively.