The above is from President Obama’s January 13, 2012 speech on streamlining government. Forget your political leanings, this isn’t about the President or either political party… it’s about marketing. And this is serious.
Replace ‘government’ with ‘marketing’, ‘citizens’ with ‘consumers’ and you’ll see what I mean. I’ll save you the trouble.
We live in a 21st century economy, but we’ve still (have) marketing for the 20th century. Our economy has fundamentally changed — as has the world — but our marketing, our agencies, have not. The needs of consumers have fundamentally changed but marketing has not. Instead, it’s often grown more complicated and sometimes more confusing.
It’s no coincidence that the so-called “American Century” seems to have run out of steam just a decade into the 21st century. When you refuse to recognize new realities, you can’t be surprised when things fall apart. You’ve lost touch – be it from stupidity or laziness or hubris.
For all marketers everywhere – BUT PARTICULARLY B2B – we are irrelevant… we have become lazy and uncreative… we are afraid to try anything new… as agencies, we follow the wishes of clients instead of using our own skills and gut feelings… we are easily replaceable because our derivative, me-too ideas can be copied by kids with a computer and a cheap video camera… we are becoming obsolete.
B2B agencies? You’re paid for what? Writing press releases that any college grad can produce? Organizing press visits for magazines that no longer have any clout? Organizing trade shows that are going, going, gone? Doing piss poor social media, grudgingly, slowly, unimaginatively? It takes no skills to do what you do, which is why hourly rates are dropping along with the amount of work you’re getting.
Companies, listen up: hire a 20-year-old English major, pay her (most likely) $30,000 and kiss your agency and its retainer goodbye. You’ll save money and lose nothing because you’ll get the same mediocre marketing that you crave.
(By the way, have you seen the want ads for ‘digital writers’? What’s a digital writer, you ask? That’s a euphemism for a semi-professional word pusher – meaning, “we don’t want to pay for a real writer because he/she is expensive and the work isn’t that creative.” The same goes for digital designers… “Designers? We don’t need no real designers!”)
Simply put, we’ve let marketing become the home of amateurs and we did it by not using our talents, not having the courage of our convictions, depending too much upon numbers and return rates, and producing horrible, confusing, pedantic work.
Read what the President said: we live in a 21st century economy and it has changed fundamentally, which means it’s changed for good.
If the economy has changed marketing must change, or are you now telling me the two are unrelated?
