The Future of Marketing
I recently came across a German lifestyle magazine from the early 1930’s and was struck by (from my perspective) the relative mundanity of it all, in particular the advertising. An invitation to a sort of ‘Ideal Homes’ exhibition showcasing the latest fitted kitchens, an advert for the latest Mercedes saloon car, a write up on potential holiday destinations for the middle class family.
It’s a segment of a market granted, but my point is people have not changed a lot in terms of aspirations or their pursuit of comfort, convenience, entertainment and other things in the ninety years since that magazine was on news-stands in Munich or coffee tables in Berlin.
It chimes with the three key things that organisations should pay close attention to as we hurtle towards the future of marketing:
1. People
2. Value Creation (for Customer, Company, Colleagues & Community)
3. Leveraging Technology to focus on points 1 & 2
Successful marketers have always leveraged technology. Newspapers, Telegraphs, Railways were three innovations that became scalable and greatly enhanced economic activity during the Industrial Revolution. By the time people were reading the magazine from 1932 that I referenced above, they were also visiting cinemas and listening to radio. Television quickly became mass-market from the late 1940’s. All this technology supported businesses in seeking to reach customers and create value in the process.
Smart marketers will stay abreast of tech and use it to win in a world where things may be more complex, but people are fundamentally the same.
Being unaware of or unwilling to build marketing strategy around these three things means missed opportunities and ultimately obsolescence as others get better at doing what you once did really well.
It’s a cliché at this stage, but Nokia springs to mind (they missed a trick on tech). A less well remembered example is British Leyland – second biggest vehicle manufacturer in the world in 1950. By 1980 in terminal decline and by 1990 gone. Leyland forgot about the importance of people; customers AND employees.