Sometimes it’s hard to tell what is the product from the marketing.Today’s post is not about Millennials, it’s about the impact they are having on marketing.
According to a survey of marketers by Pivot, the sponsor of Pivotcon, Millennials (defined as 18-34 year olds) are the primary or secondary audience for 75% of marketers. That’s huge. What’s more marketers recognize that Millennials have unique characteristics that need to inform their marketing.
- 70% of marketers consider them to have a shorter attention span
- 67% consider them to have different motivations than previous generations
- 59% consider them to be less accepting and more questioning of marketing messages in general
Millennials and social media are having a profound affect on the way marketers think about marketing. Their indifference to traditional paid communications and promotions is forcing a re-evaluation of our approach to marketing’s very role and function – how to best serve customers.
“Marketing offers a powerful perspective on how to sense, serve and satisfy the needs of others.” – Philip Kotler
Effectively meeting the challenge of social media requires more than incorporating a few new ideas here and there, or hiring a digital agency. It’s not about finding a better ‘campaign’ or more relevant positioning. It requires a radical shift in perspective.
Re-reading Bob Gilbreath’s book, “The Next Evolution of Marketing” this week provided me with an ‘A ha!’ moment: Marketing is the product or service.
What if we stop thinking about the product as something to be ‘marketed’ and started thinking of marketing itself as the product or service? Instead of creating products and services and then creating ways to market them, what if we think about marketing as the thing to be created? The alternative – thinking about marketing as something separate and performed by separate teams – misses the point that it is the marketing that adds the meaning, not the product.
Are the thousands of free app’s marketers are creating a service? Of course they are, even if consumers don’t pay for them. Is the entertainment value provided by the Old Spice team of value even if someone never buys the body wash? Is Ben and Jerry’s effort to “Help the Honeybees” a product, a service, a marketing program or all of the above?
This reframe has profound implications for how we staff, organize and manage the marketing function.
There’s a lot more to creating an ongoing service than to creating an ad campaign or web site. This insight helps explain why internal marketing teams and specialist agencies (like PR and applications developers) are more likely to be charged with developing social media programs than traditional ad agencies. If you think about it, the process of creating marketing programs has more in common with product development than the traditional ‘creative processes. For example:
- Creating experiential, social media or cause marketing programs taps the same skills that marketers use to create a line extension or new service.
- The skills required to manage marketing programs today, especially social media programs, are closer to what a brand manager does than what an account exec, PR manager or ‘creative’ person does.
- Constant innovation is required because marketing programs have lifecycles, just like products do; programs are launched, nurtured, and when they show signs of maturing, a decision must be made whether to reinvigorate or retire the program.
When you think about the skill sets involved in creating a constant stream of relevant content, it really is more of a process than a project. Once started, it doesn’t have an end point, which is why companies are rightly taking it slow and testing the waters before jumping in. They don’t want to start something they can’t sustain. It requires internal resources, not just hiring an agency.
The shift to earned media from paid means quality of content is now a key differentiator. According to David C. Edelman of Edelman Communications, brands need to think of themselves as ‘publishers’ of ‘content and applications that help consumers buy and bond with the brand’. (“Publish or Perish”, Forbes)
