As More Power Shifts to Consumers the need grows for 'Renaissance Marketers'

Together with a deeper understanding of Interactive Marketing Communication. Interactive marketing communications isn't new, but it's gaining momentum as power shifts from the marketer to the consumer and as marketers recognize the power and efficiency of taking a integrated approach to engaging consumers.Several studies indicate that achieving effective Interactive Marketing Communication campaigns is marketers' primary concern, one research study indicated that, properly executed, interactive marketing is considerably more effective allowing a Client to half his current advertising budget and be, at least, 50% more effective. “COST EFFECTIVENESSProfessor E.L. Roberto, PhD, Coca-Cola Foundation Professor of International Marketing reviewed the £5 million of independent research conducted on behalf of Interactive communication and provided this summary as to the techniques cost efficiency:“The Interactive “Event” participating brands generated recall scores that are more than 50% productive than normal advertising.   The effect on purchase intention is just as impressive if not much more.All these productivity increments are attainable at a reasonably inexpensive budget.    One Client revealed that for its participating brand, its quarter television expenditure was $5.7 million as compared to its interactive budget of $0.5 million.   This 1:10 ratio has been obtained in Interactive experience in other countries.”However there is considerable uncertainty about how to staff, design, manage and measure the success of such programs.For too long, marketing functions have been vertically organized by media type. This approach is mirrored on the agency side, with rewards based on discipline-specific P&L models. These must be torn down.On the client-side Marketing and Brand Managers must involve and lead a team of colleagues who have the responsibility, vision, understanding and commitment to engage in a media-agnostic planning process. And this team of enlightened marketers must be willing to let strategic goals -- not historic patterns -- drive budget allocations.Achieving strategic integration requires a top-to-bottom reinvention of the marketing organization. This transformation must be led by holistic professionals who are system thinkers, customer-centric believers, innovators and dreamers.These individuals should be cross-trained to understand the entire marketing spectrum and learn discipline-specific skill sets. And to specifically understand the real meaning of the word “communication” Increasingly, these leaders will need strong quantitative skills -- in order to analyze the data-rich resources and leverage mathematical tools now available, especially if they are to drive cross-disciplinary approaches that fuse disparate consumer-engagement channels. Above all, they need to be superior team leaders who have the insights, talent and passion to take marketing integration to new heights.Engaging in conversations with relevant markets (Interacting) will become an important source of knowledge and innovation, the quality of this market intelligence has already (and will do so more in the future) proven to be more accurate than research and will determine market share.Without interactive communication your efforts to create new products and markets will be taking place in a vacuum.    As your products come to reflect the information provided by the genuine conversations of interactive communication, instead of the ballyhoo and adversarial marketing tactics that poses as marketing today, companies will be far better served, and so will their customers.Oddly enough with Interactive Communication companies can have everything they’ve always wanted.   Greater market share, customer loyalty etc. etc.    All the empty promises that advertising has been promising their clients but failed to deliver!To day, big business, with their handmaidens, advertising & marketing have created mass media.And the biggest mass medium is broadcast.    And that is command and control management, complementing big business thoroughly.    Both are all about imposing control top-down and both are driven by ratings, research and cost per thousand.Sad for them people are turning away from ‘broadcast’ in their millions because of a number of reasons, they have acquired other interests and concerns which broadcast cannot provide.   Plus the fact that people are heartily sick of the sterile pronouncements of corporations and broadcast media.   And especially of advertisements!