B2B fundamentals: ignore them at your profits’ peril
‘Adaptive Brand Marketing: Rethinking Your Approach in the Digital Age’
That’s the title of a recent research report from Forrester, and here’s an extract from its Overview:
Today’s brand marketing organizations are ill equipped to handle the world of “always on” marketing in the digital age…
Over the next five years, Adaptive Brand Marketing will shift the discussion from the classic four P’s - now table stakes rather than differentiators - to permission, proximity, perception and participation.
Wow. It’s all over for us veteran marketers
Unless we can kow-tow to all things digital, perhaps we should follow these Four P’s: Pipe-down, Pack-up, Push-off and Perish.
But, there is some good news…
Although most marketers understand that ‘Price’ isn’t everything, it seems that in the future it will mean nothing at all. I hope we get there immediately. If not sooner…
Now, I haven’t read the 17-page Forrester report, and at $499 for a print-it-yousrelf pdf, I don’t think I intend to. But a man whose marketing views I admire has apparently read it: Mark Ritson has this to say in Marketing magazine:
In my opinion, it’s a disgraceful publication. It’s not that I disagree with many of the points made in the piece; it’s the way it recommends the wanton obliteration of some of the central concepts of marketing as a purportedly sensible response to the challenges of digital marketing.
According to the report, the term ‘brand managers’ should be replaced with ‘brand advocates’. What a load of unhelpful bollocks. We have spent 70 years establishing the term ‘brand manager’ as a commonly accepted and respected function within many organisations. Just as we get there, Forrester wants to knock it all down and replace it with a fluffier, camper alternative.
Blunt, but as ever, right on the money.
My thanks to Lucy Barrett & Mark Ritson for kind permission to use material from Marketing magazine.
More about fundamentals in B2B marketing:
The Man in the Chair – well worth watching on YouTube Getting real in B2B – what do you represent?
The WOMsta Monsta – Social Media and B2B Don’t trample the rules – six principles for B2B
Cultivate consistent customers, prevent price pressure - CCC & PPP: the two objectives of B2B marketing
Back to The Long Hello: making B2B marketing work for the bottom line
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