It’s getting very tiring reading lately about how digital marketing doesn’t work. First, the brand questioning this possibly isn’t taking the correct approach in our new normal because they may not have the characteristics needed to succeed.
Second, based on the lack of these characteristics, I’m curious what test and learn these marketers at this company created before noting that it’s best to pull marketing dollars away from micro targeting on digital and reallocate them back into the television ad space. Today it is no longer enough to say you have digital “experts” or that you are data-driven. What does that mean in a perpetually changing world? So what will help marketers go above and beyond in the 21st Century? A well-rounded person who has these 10 skillsets and never labels themselves an “expert.”
1. Digital Exposure – The term “digital native” is a poor predictor of understanding the world. Especially now that the best forms of digital marketing are analog. Why is this? Because experiential events can be magnified thousands of times over on platforms like Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook and the like. Street art on a corner in Brooklyn can be amplified around the world. The same with a video you produce at an event. Just growing up around technology doesn’t make you immersed in understanding human behavior. Just growing up in a purely digital world isn’t really enough anymore to holistically create marketing experiences.
2. Creative Innovation – You should never tell anyone you plan to copy what others are doing or ever state, “Let’s do what our competitors are doing because it works.” What works for them won’t work for you especially because every company is built on different objectives. Conformity doesn’t set you apart from the abundant products, services and solutions that exist all around us now.
3. Team Leader – The world is filled with too many followers and managers, not enough leaders. Leaders take risks and learn from failure. They also inspire their team to be part of something “bigger.” They also admit to mistakes and are open to what their team has to say more than dictating what they have to do. Finally, they hire people radically different from them in order to have the best “players” available.
4. Data Informed – “Data driven” is in the past. What this terminology meant was to take the learnings you had in the past and try to shape the future. But as we know, customer information isn’t the same as human insight.
5. Creative Thinker – You cannot innovate unless you think differently. You think differently by not thinking linear. This is why people who can build on ideas from the past and shape them into something new are the greatest brand strategists. They see what others cannot and make it into something new and unique.
6. Risk Taker – You can’t get ahead unless you really take chances now. The difference between the present and the past is feedback loops are shorter and the cost of testing things is lower. This means understanding how to hack the platforms that exist in ways not meant for how they were created is crucial. This means experimenting with everything to see how it works and then reshaping it to fit the human condition.
7. Coach And Collaborator – Team leaders who are dictators should be rescinded to the dust bin. The world of now is how to work with others with various backgrounds and disciplines. If you only talk to marketers, you won’t understand how to shape a better world. Collaborate with everyone you can get access to. All ideas, no matter where they come from, are still good ideas.
8. Customer Focused – This is a given. Everything should be shaped based on the view of the customer. This requires emotional intelligence and empathy.
9. Project Manager – The best marketers aren’t good at strategy, but execution of that strategy. That means being able to project manage in perpetuity. There are no beginnings and ends of marketing campaigns anymore. We’re in a world that is always on. We simply pivot or persevere.
10. Ethics And Judgment – Poor ethical standards will ruin you in a world becoming ever more transparent. Don’t take the old PR approach to the world. Admit when you’re wrong and how you plan to improve from those errors. Be open to those different from you. Hire people who don’t look or sound like you. Stand for something or be prepared to not stand at all.
I share more about this and many other topics in my new book, Disruptive Marketing.
The Blake Project Can Help: Disruptive Brand Strategy Workshop
Branding Strategy Insider is a service of The Blake Project: A strategic brand consultancy specializing in Brand Research, Brand Strategy, Brand Licensing and Brand Education
