The End of the Bling Bling Marketer

Every morning the bling bling marketer would go to work. He felt good, as in ‘on top of the world’. He really liked his job. Nice pay, nice colleagues, and he only lived like a few blocks from work. He’s married to his beautiful wife, and has two children, a boy and a girl. Just perfect.

Usually he would start his morning at the coffee machine chatting away, always with a big smile. You could really see he loved his job.

A successful Bling Bling Marketer

No, our bling bling marketer had no stress. Why would he? His strategy was clear, tactics mapped out , budgets approved, and actions planned.

After all, he had been doing this for 10 years now, successfully.

He had one of the biggest budget in the company. And that meant he had power. He had the power and control of huge amounts of money. Those huge amounts of money he would spent on agencies which would create beautiful campaigns.

When he presented to the CEO what the team had accomplished, the CEO was impressed with the shiny, flashy, massive, impressive, innovating bling bling his team had made.

Yep, he really made it.

A quiet unfortunate night

The next morning, our bling bling marketer is no more. He died. He died in the night, quietly.

Nobody saw this coming. Doctors found he died of a sudden heart attack. A very sad moment for his family and his colleagues at work.

What was the reason our bling bling marketer passed away so sudden? He seemed in good health, had his regular board meetings where his CEO would congratulate him on a job well done.

But he died from a heart attack. He just died. He had left this world. Kaput. Gone. Vanished. Not needed anymore.

Why didn’t he see this coming? Although he could have seen it coming. The signs where clear. Very clear.

He should have known better

Somehow, he failed to spot these signs:

• His customers where not responding to his emails anymore. He didn’t understand that his emails had been ending up in the spam folder of his customers. Customers had been neglecting him for months, as he never had something interesting to say.
• His customers weren’t noticing his advertisements. Although he was carpet bombing the ads, and he saw his ads everywhere, and that made him feel good, the company’s brand awareness didn’t change.
• Customers did not trust his bling bling anymore. His bling bling marketing looked great, but time and time again customers where disappointed by the product, the service, or both.
• They would ventilate their distrust and dissatisfaction on social networks. Social networks he did not understand, as he thought they where extra promotional channels.
• When his CEO asked for numbers, he responded “You can’t really measure these kind of things.”

His died right at the moment, together with thousands of other bling bling marketers, when modern marketers anno 2013 entered the scene. This was a whole new breed of marketers. They didn’t need big advertisement budgets. No, they didn’t need agencies which would develop creative, shiny, viral, social big bang campaigns.

A new breed of modern marketers

Instead, this new breed of modern marketers is different:

• You need to deserve the attention of your customers through what you give them, not by what you ask them. Only when you understand what they need, you can give them what they need.
• Creativity is good, but is trumped by measurable results. Only when measurable results are seen, efforts are expanded from agile marketing trials to larger scale actions that bring predictable end-results.
• They realize brand experience is not only delivered through marketing. Brand experience is made through each and every though point a customer possibly can have with your company, your products, your employees. This can only be achieved by really breaking down the silo’s between departments, business units and ego’s. Unfortunately breaking down the silo’s is often neglected by C-levels, and it’s the task of modern marketers to bring this on the agenda of the management team.
• Modern marketers are not afraid of risks. They explore new domains, fast, test continuously, and expand when it works.
• They know they need to embrace new marketing technologies like marketing automation, inbound marketing technologies, CRM and social technologies. They know these technologies can visualize the marketing funnel and sales funnel. They are obsessed with understand the digital buying behavior of customers throughout their buying journey, and obsessed about moving customers in a meaningful way further down these funnels.
• Social Media doesn’t scare them. They explain, evangelize, motivate and bring knowledge into the company. Social media becomes a responsibility and occupation of everyone within the company.
• They know becoming a social business is important. Although in many cases the company is not ready, they see where they want to go. Openness, authenticity, honesty are key words in becoming a social business. Becoming a social business is built from the inside to the outside, and starts internally.

Your cool. All of this makes sense for you. You are a modern marketer.

Or did I just gave you a heart attack?

I hope not.

Warm regards,

Tom De Baere.