Do you agree that As More Power Shifts to Consumers the Need Grows For 'Renaissance Marketers'?

　

Together with a deeper understanding of Interactive Marketing

Communication.

Interactive marketing communications isn't new, but it's gaining momentum as

power shifts from the marketer to the consumer and as marketers recognize the

power and efficiency of taking a integrated approach to engaging consumers.

Several studies indicate that achieving effective Interactive Marketing

Communication campaigns is marketers' primary concern, one research study

indicated that, properly executed, interactive marketing is considerably more

effective allowing a Client to half his current advertising budget and be, at

least, 50% more effective.

"COST EFFECTIVENESS: Professor E.L. Roberto, PhD, Coca-Cola

Foundation Professor of International Marketing reviewed the £5 million of

independent research conducted on behalf of Interactive communication and

provided this summary as to the techniques cost efficiency:

"The Interactive "Event(s)" participating brands generated recall scores that

are more than 50% productive than normal advertising. The effect on purchase

intention is just as impressive if not much more.

All these productivity increments are attainable at a reasonably inexpensive

budget. One Client revealed that for its participating brand, its quarter

television expenditure was $5.7 million as compared to its interactive budget

of $0.5 million. This 1:10 ratio has been obtained in Interactive experience

in other countries."

However there is considerable uncertainty about how to staff, design, manage

and measure the success of such programs.

For too long, marketing functions have been vertically organized by media

type. This approach is mirrored on the agency side, with class rewards based

on discipline-specific P&L models. These must be torn down.

On the client-side Marketing and Brand Managers must involve and lead a

team of colleagues who have the responsibility, vision, understanding and

commitment to engage in a media-agnostic planning process. And this team of

enlightened marketers must be willing to let strategic goals -- not historic

patterns -- drive budget allocations.

Achieving strategic integration requires a top-to-bottom reinvention of the

marketing organization. This transformation must be led by holistic

professionals who are system thinkers, customer-centric believers, innovators

and dreamers.

These individuals should be cross-trained to understand the entire marketing

spectrum and learn discipline-specific skill sets. And to specifically

understand the real meaning of the word "communication" Increasingly, these

leaders will need strong quantitative skills -- in order to analyze the

data-rich resources and leverage mathematical tools now available, especially

if they are to drive cross-disciplinary approaches that fuse disparate

consumer-engagement channels. Above all, they need to be superior team

leaders who have the insights, talent and passion to take marketing integration

to new heights.

Engaging in conversations with relevant markets (Interacting) will become an

important source of knowledge and innovation, the quality of this market

intelligence has already (and will do so more in the future) proven to be more

accurate than research and will determine market share.

Without interactive communication your efforts to create new products and

markets will be taking place in a vacuum.