The way of the dinosaur.????

What will become of printed media? Can electronic media replace it's forebearers? Have you been in a Barnes and Noble recently? The internet just can't replace the human tactile experience and the community of brick and mortar...the smell of coffee, the smell of books, the wonderful organic white noise of those around us, the feel of the paper, the weight, the shape of the volume. It's an experience not to be duplicated and users of all shapes and sizes and colors take part without the restrictions of dogma.

And this is true for marketing communications as well. Imagine a sales manager visiting a customer with nothing but a url. Not quite adding value to the relationship, eh? And trade shows... as much as we all love the bells and whistles, we're not happy until we fill our bags with information...full color, glossy...and lug it back to the office with us.

Don't get me wrong. As a practicing marketing professional, I'm very excited by all communications electronic and they are very effective...very. But I'm relieved that they co-exist and compliment and will not replace the printed piece...not into the foreseeable future.

Trust

Blogs have pulled the curtain on the Great Oz...the corporation has become somewhat transparent as a result. Hmmm... allow customers to tell their "story" about their use of your product or service, positive or negative. Is this marketing genius?

Look at it this way. Users have been dealing with software bugs and hardware glitches for well over a decade. A disgruntled user issuing a complaint in a public forum such as a blog is hardly revealing anything new...that the software or site or system had a problem (problems). But the curtain has come down and users are able to put faces to all levels of the organization. They are addressing a person with the complaint and a high level, empowered individual at that. Does it build trust? Yes! Can the trust be sustained? We'll see...

The Great Oz Complex

As marketers, how do we handle the communications directed toward our organization? And how do we assure that the stories told by our customers find their way into the daily operations of our organization? Blogs repesenting all levels of the corporation have certainly made a contribution in assuring our customers are heard and heeded. Prior to blogs, large corporations were seen as opaque and intractable.

HP's VP of Marketing worldwide, David Gee learned through experience the folly of not listening to his customer. Gee pulled a comment from his blog critical of upgrading ...here, I'll let Gee tell his story:
We’re learning more and more about our customers every single day. Since I started to blog back in March, I’ve received comments posted online and eMail directly to me. Some are positive and some are negative. Earlier this week, an HP customer posted a comment about his experience upgrading a media center PC. His experience was not good and he let us know. We pulled the comment. This was a bad decision and we have reversed it.
David Gee's blog - http://h20325.www2.hp.com/blogs/gee

No longer has the Great OZ the last word. Our customers have learned a lesson or two from Toto.

But is it marketing?

Marketing has historically been about communications...a one directional communications highway with a few service roads. Companies would direct their message ( pitch without content) to their customers and prospects through all available media vehicles. The service roads allowed communications to the organization by chosen customers and primarily through those pesky dinnertime survey calls. And those consumers that took it upon themselves to communicate with the company via letters of complaint were usually rewarded (bought off?) with coupons and special offers to consume more of the product about which they complained. Companies were listening... but on their terms. In short, marketing communications dictated the demographic, the means, the message and the offering.

Enter the two way highway and all the avenues leading off it... blogs, wikis, RSS feeds, email, listservs, forums, podcasts, youtube. The communication now is from the self-selected consumer to the corporation and as marketers we've begun to listen making our heretofor audience the storyteller.