I was doing some thinking regarding new communications technology and how it may be affecting the marketing heads at agencies and elsewhere.
First of all, not many marketing people know much about technology software; or, for that matter, can't keep up with it if they try. The onslaught of social media sites, widgets, wikis, apps and rapidly changing software has obviously been somewhat overwhelming to marketing people in general. The effect that these new approaches has had on marketing budgets is also enormous. Marketing people, then, have had to approach technology with caution as a result. Certainly, metrics for monitoring and evaluation purposes and how they are derived have to be understood before a marketer will recommend a new tool or medium. The problem is the jury is still out on how effective all the new media is with regard to return-on-investment. Factoring in the lack of knowing the best ways to provide creative executions for some of these programs makes things just as critical. We are only at the early stages of so much untested, untried communications that it is difficult to learn more than one or two at a time in order to gain some insight and personal experience as to how to use them effectively and efficiently.
Most of what I have seen is that the tech guys are more aligned with the Web development groups than with the CMOs. This may not be a good thing in the long run since the marketing "generalists" can often be "out of the loop" on recommendations relating to marketing executions and strategic planning. Right now, if I had to say what the level of penetration technology has made into the world of CMOs, I would say it's more limited to the more popular social media networks and some basic mobile marketing approaches.
But, things will soon change as expenditures in non-traditional media keep growing at a huge rate (currently estimated to be over $2.0 billion. In short, change in this business was never swift…even when it had to be.
