Comments on: Does Technology Make it easier

By: Linda Mihalick

Linda Mihalick — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 15:51:55 +0000

I agree, technology can make the marketer’s job harder because it is no longer as simple as hiring a PR firm, creating print materials, buying lists – traditional tasks we can understand. To be in the game, it’s required that both real and virtual worlds – which are constantly changing – be addressed. There is not a singular option to survive. The good news is, the new marketing approach allows a laser focus on what is really important to the target audience, not just taking a broad swipe and hoping for 2% ROI. As consumers become more and more in control of the marketing messages they will accept, the way they want to get information about products and services and who they want to accept opinion and advise from, the more committed businesses have to become in reaching them on their terms.

By: Rachel

Rachel — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 12:10:06 +0000

You’re right – I should have defined better which area of marketing I was talking about. It is definitely the communications, the shear number of channels that are available, the different ways you can connect and the speed that people connect and talk about you.

One side i did not touch is how technology makes the process of marketing easier. I’ve worked on a number of projects where technology is used to connect everyone together – the brand teams, the agencies, the lawyers, etc etc etc – which you need to speed up the process and reduce delay and confusion. If everyone has access to the same stuff and can comment on it over the web, far easier then shipping things round.

There are other areas – but my mini-rant was just about the communications routes.

By: Reasonable Robinson

Reasonable Robinson — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 11:14:42 +0000

There is an assumption here that when we use the word ‘marketing’ we are talking exclusively about about ‘marketing communications’ activities. This is a severly limited conception of the philosophy and process of marketing.

Technology can, and often is approached from an implicit marketing perspective. Good technology works because it is instinctivley about understanding needs and problems and providing a valued solution from the ‘users’ perspective.

Thinking about technology and marketing as divorced functional specialisms perpetuates an unnecessaru polarisation