Companies are in danger wandering into the mean marketing streets naked.
The focus is so much on ‘new media’ that the full marketing mix is being forgotten, the skills of developing targeted paper campaigns are being lost for the sake of slavishly following the electronic media.
In the ‘new media’ age, costs per contact are lower so you can make offer after offer to customers, and then a blizzard of statistics are produced, which has spawned a completely new industry, measuring every nano second that people interact. They provide the shoes, socks and hats of the Emperor’s new outfit.
Just because you can measure something it is not an excuse for doing it, unless it provides something that is both easily understood and importantly actionable.
Boredom sets in for the marketer with half a brain, listening to all the ‘interesting’ statistics, with ‘useful’ statistics in short supply.
Boredom sets in for the consumer with continual offers clogging up the inbox, offers from Amazon so far this month came in on the 16th, 18th and 21st, still a couple of days to go, are you listening Amazon, I know you are there, when I want you I will get in touch.
As can be seen by my ‘exhaustively’ researched Boredom Index (BI), there is an almost geometrical increase in the boredom level as the number of contacts increase.
I have called it a ‘Boredom Index’ even though I was taught at school that only boring people are bored, interesting people find things tedious.
The lessons need to be learnt that marketing is about a mix of media, keeping all contact options open by data cleansing and adding data such as telephone appending where it is available. Only then can all elements of the marketing mix be used, avoiding boredom and ensuring that the Emperor is fully clothed. Mind you, he may still have too many hats and socks.