by: Idris
Mootee
Marketing
has gone through evolutionary changes in the last 36 months. It is probably the
most profound period of change in the history of marketing. No one will
disagree. The first generation of marketing took a pure functional view and was
entirely tactical in nature, dominated by the 4P’s: Product, Pricing, Promotion
and Placement, focusing on pushing mass market product messages and driving
store promotions.
The next
generation of marketing takes a “customer” view: uncovering unmet
needs, facilitating conversations, realizing, and delivering real customer
value through “customer engagement“.
Many of those popular tricks in the marketer’s toolkit are now obsolete. It’s
time for a new one.
As a marketing practitioner and advisor for senior marketing
executives for many years, I am fascinated to see the evolution of strategic
marketing theory, concepts and practices. In this “experience economy”, strategic marketing now plays a
different role. It is now “conversation-driven”,
“social network-powered”‘, “technology-enabled” and “information-intensive”.
When I wrote “High Intensity
Marketing” in 2001, the idea was to help marketers to
adapt a new perspective on these elements that is encompassing and strategic,
not narrow and tactical. I came up with the “New
4Ps” model to
supplement the traditional marketing 4Ps. They are Personalization, Participation, Peer-to-Peer and
Predictive Modeling. Don’t forget it was pre Web 2.0 days. I
was even planning to assemble/acquire a network of firms offering these
capabilities. It was a little ahead of its time and it was in the midst of the
dot.com bust.
Today, all of this is very much alive and these are the directions that
cutting edge marketing is advancing. The first
“P” is the simple idea of “Personalization” which now takes on a whole new meaning (I wrote in my book
that in the near future we can segment a customer by his or her genetic type,
I’m not sure if I like that idea myself). I was focusing on customization of
products and services through the Internet.
The second “P” is the concept of “Participation”, it is to allow customer to
participate in what the brand should stand for; what should be the product
directions and even which ads to run. This concept is laying the foundation for
disruptive change that we have yet to see the full impact. Looking back I was
grossly underestimating the degree of democratization brought about by this
idea. By enabling each of us to create and publish our own stories, the power
of deciding what we read; listen and watch has spread from a handful of media
companies to anyone with a camera, a connection and a computer.
The
third “P” is “Peer-to-Peer””interruptive” which refers to customer
networks and communities where advocacy happens. The historical problem with
marketing is that it is in nature, trying to impose their brand on the
customer. This is most apparent in TV ad, which pushes out its own idea of what
brand is without engaging the customers. These “passive customer
base” will ultimately be replaced by the “active customer
communities”. Brand engagement happens within those conversations.
The last “P” is “Predictive Modeling”
which
refers to neural networks algorithms that are being successfully applied in
marketing problems (both a regression as well as a classification problem).
Early in 1991, John Seely Brown, then Director of Xerox Palo Alto
Research Center, referred to customers as the “ultimate partner”, he
was absolutely right. Customers can now participate in every part of the value
chain. I will trying to set up a network of agencies to deliver on this,
unfortunately I was a little ahead of its time. The new 4Ps concept which
I presented in many conferences including the Internet World (NYC) in 2001 is
real today. I’ll share it with you here at a later date.
Original post: http://mootee.typepad.com/innovation_playground/2007/07/wen-20-and-the-.html
