Brand owners go digital to engage consumers – a decade late

AdWeek has an article about the way that marketers are splitting into those that “get it” and those poor saps who still think marketing is all about designing brochure and mail shots. I jest, but only a little.

The chief digital honcho at Accenture Interactive said that there is a fault line rapidly emerging among executives.

"One camp sees the shift to digital as a terrific opportunity to embrace a reinvention of marketing - the methods and processes and essence of what good marketing means – the other camp agrees things are changing, but are not yet clear on what the next generation of marketing needs to be."

Sprint’s marketing supremo said: "If you're a CMO and you're not deeply engaged and intimately knowledgeable when it comes to all things digital, then you're stuck in a prior decade and destined to fail."

Good grief, I cannot believe that this dumb argument is still going on.

Back in 2001 I wrote a paper called Interactive Marketing needs Interactive Marketers. It was obvious to me (and most other people at the time) that digital had changed the very essence of marketing and that marketers had to acquire a whole new skills set.

Here we are, 10 years later, and still talking about the need for marketers to embrace all things digital.

It is a bit like two other arguments that go back even longer – like 20 or even 30 years.
“Why isn’t marketing more influential in the boardroom”
“Why is it so difficult to synchronise a company’s IT and business strategy”

Each new generation that encounters these problems think they have discovered something new, rather than something horribly boring.

I