Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
JULIE KRUEGER: Marketing has changed over my career from
the advertisers pushing messages out, as they wanted
to, to masses of people to doing more targeted mass
advertising to interactive marketing.
And now we're at a point where it's not just interactive, it
needs to be engaging.
It's not enough just that you have a two-way conversation.
But you actually are competing against so many other things
that are bombarding consumers that your brand really, really
needs to come to life.
And so the opportunity to truly engage with consumers,
that is so exciting to me, because it allows your brand--
whether you're a retailer, a
manufacturer, service provider--
to really come to life in a way that wasn't possible
before all of the technological advancements
that we've had.
Advice that I give to marketers, again, regardless
of their field, is it all has to focus around the consumer,
which is marketing 101.
So even as we have new opportunities, and new
vehicles, and new avenues, and apps, and links, and all of
that, it still has to start with the consumer and what's
going to be relevant and meaningful to them.
And if you're not there and you're just hyping up a
particular technology, you're not where the
consumer needs to be.
The other thing that I talk about is that consumers now
consume media in so many different ways and get
information in so many ways.
You have to be where they are.
So you can't just say I'm going to put all my bets in
this one particular media, because you'll miss out on so
many consumers.
And you'll also miss out on a particular consumer who's
consuming media across different platforms. You need
to be where they are all the time.
So the importance of integrated marketing campaigns
is greater than ever.
The challenge is we just have so many more places where we
have to connect with our consumers.
But building marketing plans today, it's much more exciting
but it's far more complex than it used to be.
But you can do things that you could never do before.
I think that it depends on the industry in terms of how quick
embracing and employment or deployment of new media, new
technology takes place.
In the retail industry, because there have been such
longstanding, effective vehicles to communicate with
consumers, I think that the retail industry is a little
bit slower to adapt.
And what I should say is, they are good
at testing and trying.
I think that they need to be bolder in more fully embracing
and bringing it into the mix.
Retailers tend to hold on to very traditional things.
And no fault of their own, it's largely because there are
a lot of influences that cause that, a lot of competing
interests within a retail company.
And there are a lot of people to not just convince, but
educate in order to convince of this
changing consumer dynamic.