Customer Speak – A Marketing Blog from Bridgz Marketing Group

Marketing Digital by Bridgz

Speaking at the 2010 Online Marketing Summit held last month in San Diego, John Battelle, the CEO of Federated Media Publishing, had an interesting take on how brands have come to be defined in a customer-centric marketplace, within a social media context.

“A brand is what one of you says to another one of you about a company,” he stated.

It’s not about the products but the conversation, he said. “The most important thing marketers can do is to leverage new tools that allow people to engage in conversations around the brand. We need to go where the human passion is, we need to listen, understand the social mores of the conversation and figure out how to add value.”

It sounds very much like the ideas put forth in the Cluetrain Manifesto more than a decade ago and it still holds true in theory, though I’m wondering how much has really changed other than the tools. Are marketers any closer to going where the human passion is? Are we really listening and engaging with customers at a deeper level? Or are we still trying to push brand messages and promotion through new media?

With all due respect John, it’s not about the tools. Marketers have become too enamored by the digital, which tends to be media-centric, and aren’t focusing enough on the marketing, which is customer-centric. Marketing can be digital but digital is not marketing.

Going where the human passion is requires more than mastery of social media and interactive technologies, it requires a deeper level of insight to what customers think and how they feel, the perceptions and emotions that drive conversations and purchase behaviors.  It is the insight that must be leveraged in order to make the tools effective. The conversation cannot be limited to online but must extend to every point where the customer touches to organization.

We can chase the technology forever and never get to where the human passion resides.

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