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 We are no doubt living through some harrowing times from a financial, world and human perspective. There is not one sector of our lives where things have remained constant. Our new President-Elect spoke during his campaign about the need for "change". Not so sure that we all need this much change. The front pages of business journals continue to tell the story of crashing fortunes, budget cuts and substantial right sizing and layoffs. We are enduring questions in every sector of our economy and daily life.
Within the marketing community, the tactics and strategies that dominated the text books for years are all being thrown away. In fact, marketing and communications need to adjust almost on a weekly basis. With the amount of change occurring in consumer media patterns, the idea of broadcast media as a marketing strategy needs to be dismantled once and forever. Within the media construct, we see the decline in audience involvement and size impacting legacy media, the likes of television, magazines, newspapers and direct mail.
It's very clear that the internet spawned a new consumer paradigm. No longer will we, as consumers, tolerate being faceless, profile–less units inside a customer database. Enlightened marketers started to transform their communications strategies several years ago when the first indicators started appearing. There were a select few who understood the importance of building a profile database and creating dynamic dialogues with their customers that leveraged real-time profile information. These smart marketers realized the day was coming when budgets would be under intense scrutiny and the axiom of "throwing money against the wall to see what would stick" would come home to roost.
Is there any doubt in any of our minds as we listen these days to the major auto companies, financial institutions and other sector giants beg for bailout money... that our way of marketing... our way of bringing product to market has been broken and is in desperate need of fixing? Marketers are spending too many dollars in media that simply don't and won't perform the way they used to years ago. Our media landscape and the relative importance of that legacy media in our mix has changed forever. Throwing money into the old strategies and thinking that it will magically respond is foolish.
Consumers want direct, relevant, intimate relationships with their marketer partners. It's time we all started realizing this: it's time we embraced the new paradigm and started leveraging the new tool set to construct the 2009 version of effective communication strategies. At Zeta Interactive, I have built a team of professionals across all disciplines that understands this transformation. Heck... we have been trying to alert marketers for years of the changing paradigm and the absolute necessity to change thinking, strategy and tools. We are here to help, guide and implement the most effective strategy to help you achieve your goals and objectives... before your competitor achieves them first.
We are rolling out what we believe will be an incredible suite of analytic and deployment tools and services early in 2009 that will provide you with ground breaking insight and data that can transform your interactive strategy. I hope the events of recent weeks and months have stirred you to investigate at a deeper level all that needs to change within your strategy in the year ahead. We look forward to working with you…and leveraging our insight and tools to move the “needle” for your company.
Al D
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