The Future of Marketing at the Media Aces Conference (Feb 2011)

At the latest Media Aces* conference (7 February, 2011), I delivered a keynote speech entitled “Marketing in 2012.” There were 400 people on hand and the conference was broadcast in live streaming via TechToc.tv and FrenchWeb.tv.

Here a the salient (sorry about the bullet) points from the presentation.

In 2011, the 5 key words and events:

• Curation (the art of filtering the good from the bad)
• Sorting your lists into groups and putting up filters (friends, contacts…)
• Social Niche – this will be the year of the social media niche (ex: dogster for those who love dogs, obami a closed Facebook-style platform for schools)
• WikiLeaks will make its mark felt in corporate boardrooms, as leaks from regular, industrial companies bare non-transparent activities within
• Facebook will be bought by Microsoft for 75 billion dollars, stimulated by the launch of the Facebook mobile phone on a Nokia platform (I wrote about this previously in Looking back at 2011 – December 2010).  Why is this so important?  Nokia (more than 50% share of the Chinese mobile market) will enable Facebook to penetrate into China (where it has only has 20,000 users), whereas Facebook will help the weakened Nokia in North America — I do not believe the recently announced alliance between Nokia and Microsoft will not achieve this.  Meanwhile, you just have to imagine a blue telephone with an integrated Xbox/Kinect and an interface that seamlessly combines Bing + Facebook for a completely new mobile internet experience ; on the business side, you need to imagine Outlook with a fully integrated Facebook (enterprise version, of course).

The 5 big changes for Marketing in 2012:

• The 4Ps of traditional marketing will play second fiddle to the marketing of the 5Es: engagement, exchange, emotion, experience et essence
• Email marketing must evolve and improve to contend with new filters that will be delimited by your own friends, network and/or those of friends of friends, etc.  Platforms such as Facebook Messages or Digsby create a central message dashboard whereby incoming messages could be scanned and filtered according to if they come from a valid member of your network.
• The role of the Community Manager will be dissolved since, by the impossibly wide scope of the job there is no way for an individual to master each component.  More importantly, management of the community belongs to the entire organization.
• The Customer Service department must find a strategic place at the center of the organization.
• The marketing department must also evolve to become more earnestly customer-centric.  To the extent that words provide structure, I would rename marketing as Client Relations.  And I would do the same exercise for all the chief functions (see the image to the right).

In terms of consequences for the organization, I cited three pivotal points:

• The Information Systems department (IS) must align with marketing such that the geeks understand the marketing preoccupations and marketers must get a handle on the techno-babble.
• Human Resources are absolutely strategic.  HR must (re-)gain its importance at the center of the organization to ensure the most appropriate recruitment and, above all, the creation of a powerful Learning for Development program, capable of assisting and driving the transformation of the company toward the 2.0 mindset, to create a more client-centric orientation, to support greater transparency, and a collaborative spirit…
• Finally, the brand must gain in pertinence and in emotion within as much as without the organization: the employees are the most important way to embody and transfer the passion and values of the brand.  To the extent the de facto values of the brand resonate and are lived within the organization, the more powerful the experience will be for the customer.

See the presentation (in French) : Le Marketing en 2012 (Media Aces Feb 2011)

Marketing in 2012 (Media Aces Feb 2011) from Minter Dial

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