Is marketing Really Dead?

The first glimpse of the title of this article, I was shocked – how could marketing be dead? If so, what is the meaning for me to learning it right now? After read through the article, I found that “marketing is dead” actually is refer to the traditional marketing. Instead, the author, Bill Lee, pointed out that the future marketing will be replaced by social media which is more customer-oriented. However, I need to argue about Bill’s opinions somehow.

First of all, I have to admit that I agree with the author to some extent. The three parts of evidence Bill provided is objective and persuasive. In real life, Take me as an example, as a customer, I always look up the information or comments from internet before I make the decision for my purchase. Also, CEO nowadays pays more attention to the result instead of the process. For instance, CEO from my company currently laid of many employees from marketing department, because the company keeps losing money. Often, marketing is the department that takes the most responsibility for the company’s equity. In addition, the tendency of marketing today is more about the experience – user experience, feedback, comments, etc. Just like a company would not hire people who have no related experience, and know nothing about the filed.

Because there is a saying that "customers are gods", the four ways Bill mentioned that how marketing should guide the customers are all from the customers’ aspects. Nevertheless, those four means are partially, but not absolutely right.

To restore community marketing is applicable, because customers need a place to exchange opinions and user experience. The problem is that the comments from the customers are subjective – everyone has different thoughts on one thing, just like two leaves are the same. Moreover, it is hard for the company to define whether all the feedback is from the real customers or not. Sometimes, competitors may hire people to defame their rival’s products or service. It would be better if the customer can combine the community information with the traditional marketing information from the company. Finding customer influencers and assist them to establish social capital is a win-win solution for both company and customers. However, it is not easy to do so, and most of the customers they actually prefer the real incentives, such as coupons and discounts, rather than networking abilities. The part about getting customer advocates involved is a great idea from my aspect. It is not only because referral is more persuasive, but also has more infection to the target customers.

In my point of view, Bill’s future marketing is more like a pull marketing strategy, and traditional marketing from his opinion is nothing but a push marketing strategy. In real life, pull strategy is more ideal, but push strategy, such as adverting is essential. Without push strategy, how could the company reach the mass customers at first step? The best and most effective way would be combine those two strategies as push-pull strategy. Although digital marketing may become more popular in the future, marketers should not fully abandon traditional marketing.

 

Reference: Bill Lee, Marketing is Dead

http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/08/marketing_is_dead.html

Take Away from "Attack of the Customers: The Pampers Dry Max Crisis"

The crisis of Pampers’s diapers is a very typical issue happened in fast consumer industry. There are couple of reasons cause the customers’ dissatisfaction for Dry Max, including delayed announcement and the rash issue. However, Pampers took some action to save the company’s reputation ultimately. Here are some of my take aways:

·         Customer needs weigh much than the technology needs

·         Social media plays an important role in people’s lives and business

·         Competitors could pretend to be customers who preach the real customers to attack your products

·         Public relation (PR) is significant to cover the crisis

The article mentioned the Dry Max is a new product used a novel technology. In real life, technology needs often conflict with customer needs. This reminds me of my internship this summer in a hi-tech company. I had several meetings with engineers; meanwhile, I collected feedback from customers. The information I gathered from customers are contradict with the opinions from engineers. Customers wanted the product to be simpler or easier to be used while engineers preferred the more advanced product with higher technology. Nevertheless, the customers are the group of people who consume and pay for the products. Thus, how to meet the customers need is more important than covering the technology issue.

Another reason cause the protest of Dry Max is because the company delayed the announcement – even when there is an accident such as rash happened to customers, they still denied the innovation. Because Pampers was disingenuous at first, the customers were really pissed off. Due to the slipstreaming, one of the customers used the Facebook to set up a community posting the negative comment and find other customers who had the same experience. Social media such as Facebook, Twitter, and Blog nowadays have a strong impact to the customers. If Pampers could have taken advantage of e-marketing to promote their new products in advance, they would not encounter with such protest.

Although the case does not mention about the competitors, I am wondering whether the complaints are all from the customers or is there any possibilities that the competitors also participated into the protest. It is essential for Pampers to distinguish the complaints from competitors with the ones from their real customers.

However, with those protest and complaints, Pampers implement public relation (PR) to recover the loss. As a marketer, leaning how to use PR to defuse crisis if critical. Pampers emphasized the importance of protecting baby’s health and safety, so instead of arguing and defensing for the company, Pampers sought treatment of rash for the parents and educated them. This is a very clever strategy, because on one side, the customer felt the company paid attention to the severe problem; on the other hand, Pampers successfully protect its brand and reputation through PR.

In conclusion, in order to launch a new product to the market, making a comprehensive marketing strategic plan is fatal. This plan should not only include pre-launch plan, customer requirements and competitive analysis, but also should contain the resolution for post-sale crisis. Also, e-marketing cannot be overlooked during the marketing process, because it connect customers with customers, and customers with sellers.

Reference: Paul Gillin, Attack of the Customers: The Pampers Dry Max Crisis

http://gillin.com/blog/2012/08/attack-of-the-customers-the-pampers-dry-max-crisis/

Thoughts for "Is google making us stupid"

As the metaphor made by Nicholas Carr, the brains of human beings are plasticable, so that the technology like clock can change the patterns of our lives. Similarly, internet as one of the intellectual technologies, has the even stronger impact on human beings. Thus, some of the traditional media change the way it used to be, and transform it close to the new media – internet media.

After read over the article, there are three thoughts that I generated. Firstly, people get lazy when they get the chance to make work easier – they do not practice memory as frequently as used to be. For example, after the Microsoft Office came to the market, people abandon the traditional way to type the word – utilizing typewriter or pen and paper. Although the software is much easier to be used and operated, and with the help of the error check function, plenty of people cannot spell words correctly by themselves right now.

Secondly, although Google engine enable our lives better off and more efficient, it takes much advantage of economy. More people use Google to do the investment, such as advertisements. Sometimes, when I searched for an unpopular topic, I need to flip over couple of pages to find a link that I really need, which is really annoy. Because the top results in the first pages are the ones that is viewed and clicked by most of the audience.

Finally, the issue closest to us students is that when we meet with problems nowadays, the first thing we will do is Google searching. For instance, we use Google search or Google Scholar to find out the answers or references for academic writing. However, this is considered as plagiarism if without paraphrase. Moreover, even we paraphrase the answer, the help with Google does not make us think about the topic ourselves. Instead, we utilize other people’s thoughts or works, which is helpless to our academic lives.

As far as I am concerned, whether the intellectual technology like Google is good or not is hard to say, since it is a paradox issue. Artificial intellectual makes our lives better and easier, but at the same time, also bring us laziness and risks. The effectiveness of Google mostly depends on the individual human being – the way we use it and the purpose we want to achieve.

Reference: Nicholas Carr. Is Google making us stupid?

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/is-google-making-us-stupid/306868/