I have a real problem with this question I get asked often… “So, what is our future role in stimulating need?” I realize that a great deal of the marketing world focuses on “stimulating need” rather than fulling needs, solving problems, providing solutions, and making things easier.
For me, that is artificial and self-serving (YES, I realize for the most part marketing IS self-serving). It is not where I want to be and for me it sounds very “tRUMPian.”
Maybe the current political climate has opened my eyes to truth in advertising (or ‘truth’ period), but like I say all the time about how I market Ted Rubin (and my businesses)… “I do not want to sell myself, I want to be bought.”
I have spoken a lot this past year about changing our marketing mindset from ‘targeting’ to ‘matchmaking’… and I believe this change in mindset will lead to a valuable and necessary change in approach for marketers.
It’s not that the idea of targeting is always a bad thing, even from the consumer’s perspective. It’s the mode of thinking that results, the culture we create, and the results we produce.
A match is a collaboration, rather than a one-sided, transaction-based relationship.
A match is something more lasting, even if it’s not permanent. If I’m matched with a service, brand, or marketing campaign that genuinely addresses my needs, then ideally that’s just the start of a longer relationship. I gain confidence that the brand is interested in me as more than a statistic, and the brand has a much easier path to learning more about me. It’s a collaboration, rather than a one-sided, transaction-based relationship. This is more important now than ever before, for so many reasons.
So MY future of marketing in 2020, and going forward, is to #FollowThePath I’ve been paving, continue to do everything I can to instill a new thought process, a more valuable mindset, in the marketing community, and to embrace the incredible value of the Rockstar CMO Community that Ian Truscott has built and nurtured. Always remember… a network give you reach, a community gives you power!