The Long Goodbye or Are You Talkin' to Me? | SMLXL - Business and Communication Innovation from Alan Moore

The Long Goodbye or Are You Talkin’ to Me?

May 15th, 2004

Finally I have got round to responding to this article written by Nick Kettles
When the Chartered Institute of Marketing produces a report "You talkin to me? Marketing Communications in the age of consent."
One knows that things in the world of business and marketing communications are changing.
For example; The average cost of making a new Hollywood movie went up 8.6% in 2003. The average cost of marketing a new Hollywood movie went up 28% in 2003. Yet audience numbers FELL by 4% in 2003. As ticket prices grew 4%, Hollywood box office revenues remained at $9.5B in the USA in 2003. Financial Times 24 March 2004.

Chief Marketing Officer for Procter & Gamble, Jim Stengel, is quoted as saying that "In 1965, 80 per cent of adults in the US could be reached with three 60 second TV spots. In 2002, it required 117 prime time commercials to produce the same result. In the early 1960s, typical day-after recall scores for 60-second prime time TV commercials were about 40 per cent and nearly half of this was elicited without any memory aid. Consumers have changed dramatically. They show an increasing lack of tolerance for marketing that is irrelevant to their lives, or that is completely unsolicited. Traditional marketing methods are diluted by a hurried lifestyle, overwhelmed by technology, and often deliberately ignored."
Kettles writes that the CIM report outlines the fact that the effectiveness of traditional interruptive communications is eroding. And that marketing should itself offer value to both the customer and the seller. Essentially the customer arrives at the front of the value chain not at the end.
Sounds simple and it is. It's just that we have to change the way we think and practice marketing as a consequence. From Push to Pull.
The author of Right Side Up Alan Mitchell, has written a very interesting piece for SMLXL which explores these very issues. You are welcome to download it and share it with your colleagues. Although it is an analysis of what's going wrong. It also examines how we might go about putting it right.