“Darkness falls across the land, the midnight hour is close at hand, creatures crawl in search of blood, To terrorise your neighborhood” – part of the closing lyrics to MJ’s Thriller or a standard Friday night out in Shoreditch? Difficult to say. Once again Halloween is upon us and it’s the time of year that historically has empowered marketers with the kind of ghoulish creativity that results in devilishly innovative campaigns. Last year, Ford ran an elaborate car wash prank, leaving occupants screaming for their lives and the makers of the film Ouija hired a mystic with an eye-popping ability to terrify and titillate consumers into seeing their latest work. However, karma has plans this year. Whilst those in the boardroom may well sit and mock the pitiful screams of the unwitting consumer, there are some truly terrifying digital related facts that should be sending shivers down the spines of marketing executives.
Scary Stats
Marketer’s hearts are not the only things that are racing, the pace of digital change is accelerating with every week that goes by. Britain is already facing a digital skills gap, yet according to recent research from O2, 2.3 million digital workers will be required by 2020. This is quite an ask given that there are still many within the industry who don’t know their DMP from their DSP. Beware the marketer who falls asleep at their desk, lest the Freddy Krueger of digital transformation murder their careers in their sleep.
Programmatic display ad spending will near the £2.5bn mark next year, accounting for 70 per cent of total UK media budgets spent on the ad format. It doesn’t take a mad scientist to understand programmatic but who within your company really knows how it works? And then who could explain it well enough to teach others? Talk about scary!
There must be a way out of this zombie flesh eating mall of marketing!
There’s no escape…or is there?
Media and communication technologies are changing everything about how we do business but somehow businesses are managing to stay the same. Digital knowledge is left in a silo, given to one department to keep abreast of, while the rest of the company gets left behind. The problem is that digital is a shapeshifter - just as you think it’s safe to leave one area of your business alone in the dark, it rears its ugly head.
You need a new sales strategy, a new marketing strategy, a new customer service strategy, a new supply chain, a new strategy for production: the digital infection irrevocably changed each of these aspects of running a business. Are marketers just another victim or are they the unsuspecting hero in the fight for digital business success?
Consumer centricity is the by-product of digital transformation, and it places the power right back into the hands of marketers. Everywhere, consumers are giving marketers information that can guide them safely out of the zombie infested mall. They demand that we move more quickly, that we listen more, that we design more effective products and services. The marketer has to provide the vaccine to the other blood soaked areas of the business and the vaccine should consist of a dash of good old-fashioned consumer insight work with enabling the marketer to have a broader remit so that the customer is listening to and acted upon right across the business.
Dealing with the digital skills gap is another area where the marketer must play an active role. All too often this challenge is given to the L&D team to handle and they aren’t the ones feeling the pain or have a big enough weapon to keep the zombies at bay. Creating a culture of learning should be led by the CMO. This is partly because if learning about media and communication should come from anywhere is clear it should come from the marketing function but also because it’s a huge opportunity for them to help lead the organisation in this structural change.
Continuous learning is the best defense against constant digital change. Yes, there will always be something new, but building a company which is prepared for what’s coming, has to involve empowering staff to understand the technological processes that dominate digital marketing at this moment.
It’s time for marketers to step up and take charge. If they are the ones caught sleeping then it won’t be long before all the other players in the story will meet a sticky end………
By Richard Townsend, Managing Director and co-founder of Circus Street.
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