Who is in control of your brand?

After 2 weeks in my new role (working with exceptionally smart people), and reading this post my feelings/opinions around marketing have been reinforced. I’ve put together a series of posts to cover a range of topics.

Marketing at it’s core is simple and obvious, the world ISN’T changing dramatically, we’re just creates of habit and have become set in weird and wonderful ways. As a digital marketing strategist I’m proud to believe that mass / traditional media works. Buzz words like engagement, relationships, dialogue, feedback 3.0 are ways for people to talk around real outcomes and facts. Marketing is ALL ABOUT SALES, sure, engagement is great, but do we sell more product now or in the future?

The topics I’ll cover:

1. Buzz words, headlines and stupidity

2. People are people with core desires

3. Broadcast media works

4. Digital media is too accountable

5. Social media experts can’t exist

6. Marketing is inevitably about sales

7. Outcomes are key

These are issues that I deal with on a day-to-day basis as a Digital Marketing Strategist helping organisations connect with their audience. I felt the need to share them.

Dave

So, my good mate, David Campell decided to sell up and move to Londontown. From everything I’d heard late last year the world was about to explode/implode and big cities were being hit hard. Sydney certainly felt it, with most big advertising agencies having global mandates to free all hires, and even fire people.

That makes David insane really, well, he’s a digital creative director, and proportionallty (considering population differences) he found that there there were 10x as many digital creative director roles in London to Sydney… Weird, I thought London was about to implode?

Emma

Then when another mate Emma Rhys flew through town for a wedding, over a quick coffee I discovered that maybe London would be a better place to be as she’s getting offers left right and centre. She’s a digital producer.

This post was prompted by the following article in B&T’s daily email out.

Source: B&T Today

The economic downturn has led to a 30% cut in marketing budgets and the transfer of marketing dollars from traditional areas to digital, according to Joseph Payne, CEO of global online marketing firm Eloqua.

In Sydney for the Ernst & Young’s CEO Roundtable “Creating and Sustaining Business Growth”, Payne said: “We are seeing a shift of business dollars to online marketing with business purchasing search terms, raw lead sources and technology to generate and manage pipeline leads.” Payne also encouraged companies to focus on bringing in business leads from both sales and marketing.

Marketing Decisions CEO William McNamara, on of Eloqua’s Australian partners, said: “These companies recognise that in times like this you would be a brave chief marketing officer reporting on a new branding initiative to the board rather than describing, via numbers, how many new leads you are qualifying for sales to convert, and how many have indeed converted.”

McNamara added that tough economic times have witnessed a “shift from broad spend on advertising to specific measurable programs that generate leads”.Eloqua is a provider of demand generation applications, while Marketing Decisions is a b2b marketing agency.

This is all great news for people in digital (*waves*) as we’re used to delivering high & short term ROI. But my only concern is that digital may be perceived as only that, a DM channel, not a place for building reputation, loyalty and long term ROI… We will see.

So what does all this mean? Move to London? Become a ‘social media consultant’? Don’t listen to Dave? Start up a new TV channel? I dunno, but there are opportunities where you want to see them.

(PS I’m starting a new job on Monday, I’ll let you know more later. One thing I can say is that I’m looking forward to it.)