Last week I attended my monthly Strategic Marketing Peer2Peer hosted by Communitech. The event featured Alan Quarry of Quarry Integrated Communications as the guest speaker. Alan addressed the relevance of Marketing with his presentation: “Marketing is Dead, Long Live the Customer.” Alan opened up his presented with a great video that described the relationship between advertisers/marketers and their customers. Essentially, the customer is “breaking up” with advertising because it (or “he” in this video) no longer listens, doesn’t hang out at the same places and does not understand the customer anymore. To watch the video, click here.

As a segway from this video, Alan made a great point about marketers: we need to be “shift disturbers” and make the change from old advertising to new advertising. The economy has shifted in terms of power – taking it away from the marketer and handing it over to the audience – and marketers need to accept this and use it in how they approach their customers in B2B or B2C. This shift is due in large to the explosion of Social Media use, where customers have more control over what they want to see and how they want to see it. Social Media has also made things simplified and quick. End users don’t want to spend 30 seconds to a minute watching a commercial or spend 15 minutes reading an email newsletter; marketers need to get their point across as quickly and efficiently as possible.

Alan broke down the commonly known acronym “R.O.I.” to mean “Return on Insight” rather than “Return on Investment.” The cause of this shift is due to the following:

    • Marketers need customer insight in order to find out what’s working and what is not. i.e. blog comments, Twitter conversations, Facebook posts
    • Social Media exists so conversations can get started. Sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Google+ and Pinterest, don’t exist purely so people can post information about themselves; end users are looking to form a relationship with their suppliers before trusting them with their business.
    • Customers want to be involved. Our end users want to get something valuable out of the information we provide. In order to provide this, ensure your newsletter for example, has useful content rather than promotional jargon.


As a result of these points, marketers need to do the following:

LOOK --> LISTEN --> LEARN (UNDERSTAND) --> LEVERAGE

For more information about how you can make the shift in Marketing for your team, or for help getting your Marketing efforts off the ground, take a look at how we can help. For more information on VA Partners, visit our website.