The Marketer’s Technology Dilemma | Minnesota Business

Last week I put in my time as a traveling demotivational speaker.

Of course, that’s not how I went into the week. I went in all bright-eyed and bushy tailed ready to foment people into a digital marketing lather, all ready to tackle the world. I left the week wondering if I had just spent a week punching people in the face.

During four public speaking events, I addressed two resorts, one travel industry group, and a conference of non-profit marketers. Each group shared the same challenge — how do we reach and engage new audiences? My message was clear: if this is your business — to reach essentially anyone with a cell phone and Internet access — then whether you like it or not, you are in a technology business. You, as a marketer, are a technology person. You have a technology career. The separation between technology and marketing is no longer the Great Departmental Divide. I simply can’t see any way around it. You can no longer in-source, out-source or — gasp — ignore the realities of your field. Consumers across nearly all demographics have become technology literate, digitally nimble, voracious imbibers of content, and equally adroit sharers of opinion.

In Las Vegas last week, I mentioned to an owners group of a large Strip property that every day, thousands of visitors enter their doors armed with tiny story-telling machines called smart phones. En masse, they create and share more content in a single day than a brand may in an entire yearlong campaign. This content is first-hand, unfiltered, honestly communicated niche content which is exactly what we consumers wish to engage when considering brands. Sorry, but I just can’t find a way where any non-technologically enhanced or extended advertising program will ever compete with this onslaught of consumer-generated storytelling.

What this means to me is that marketing leaders are not only charged with creating compelling brand experiences but they themselves need to be the people to imagine how technology will enhance and extend — oops, said those two words again — the totality of a brand experience. Too often I see creative people develop ideas, then ask others to figure out how technology will work with those ideas. How can this possibly work anymore? And please don’t get me wrong on what I mean by “brand experience.” I don’t just mean, say, a branded iPhone app or other cool-factor program. I’m talking about every single touchpoint in a potential consumer’s consideration process, from awareness to tapping into the ginormous amount of consumer-generated content to extracting their wallets. Technology has infiltrated every single point in that process so as marketers we need to know better than anyone — A-N-Y-O-N-E — how we play in that world at the inception of marketing ideas, not at the end when the idea may become moot altogether.

Based upon my experience last week delivering this message to a wide array of audiences, I can tell you that there’s a real look of fear in people’s eyes. Seasoned marketers were not prepared to have to become technology people. In fact, a great many of them loathe the entire premise. I get it. But I just can’t see any way around it. If you are entering a career in marketing or advertising, prepare thyself to become intimate with consumer electronics, data, and applications. If you don’t naturally love them, learn to love them. If in the end, you simply cannot find yourself lovin’ the digital, then it’s hard for me to continue to recommend this rapidly changing field to you. There are plenty of great creative-only fields — but advertising and marketing isn’t one of them.

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Andrew Eklund :: Founder & CEO
Ciceron :: Digital Marketing
www.ciceron.com
612.230.3901 :: LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/andreweklund

Twitter: @aeklund

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Interesting article by Andrew Ecklund, regarding revenge of the nerds and the convergence of technology and marketing. The meaning of “creatives” is expanding.