Discipline

I apparently lack it. Or time. Either way, I haven't posted in two years. Oh well. It has to do with whether I'm in consulting mode or employee mode. You might have guessed that now I'm in the former.

So, here's what I'm thinking today. It's time for the digirati (those of us in digital marketing) to focus on the marketers who seek us, and to stop trying to sell to those who don't. No more meetings about whether seniors use the web or if women are gamers. No more arguments over the relative value of TV versus digital video. No more wrangling over how to translate a GRP into some newly redefined measure of engagement. No more. I'm ready for conversations where we are talking about how to do these things, not whether. I want to be deciding among vendors who can write iPhone apps, not between spending on apps versus ads.

Most of you may have already had this revelation, but I've been bloodying my forehead for some time, taking on the role of "change agent." Inside organizations. On behalf of marketers. Guess what? Most marketing people I've come across lately don't like change. I don't mean risk...they definitely don't like that. I mean they don't like things that are different from the way they did it last year.

This has been difficult for me to really get, because I LOVE change. To me, the thrill of marketing is in solving an old, recurring problem in a new way. But not new for new's sake; new, because now, new is likely better. And certainly not new in an unstructured way: a new solution needs to solve the problem in a predictable way, consistent with goals of the brand and marketing and consumer. And the impact of new needs to be clearly measured. Probably in new ways. New requires a disciplined approach to marketing (among other attitude shifts by marketers) that is that is fed by an expanding flow of new solutions.

Anyway, I'm off now to seek open-minded marketers - interested the discipline of taking managed risk with new solutions that are iteratively better over time - to help make them successful.

I feel better already.