Open letter from a marketer

October 21, 2009 | Posted by : Alexandre | Blog, Brandialog | 0 Comment»

Dear marketers,

I had a dream last night. I am marketing manager. Doing happy campaigns for happy packaged good

products. I am specialized in diapers. Great diapers. The best. I love them. But I am not sleeping that well anymore.

It started the other night. I had a terrible nightmare. I was working in my office, peacefully checking emails, and suddenly someone knocked on the door. I could not even answer that a guy had jumped in, and started to pitch in about buying 1 ton of sand. Great for your building projects he said. I could not interrupt him to explain I was in the baby care business that 30 seconds later, he had escaped.

Then another guy came, trying to sell me an oil platform, for a few hundred millions. I was astonished but he disappeared too, after 30 seconds.

An another one came in, talking about an hotel chain for sale !

And so on…15 minutes later, they had all disappeared. My assistant was gone too, so I called my wife Helen to tell her the story.

But her voice sounded mechanical ‘Bienvenue chez Helen, welcome to Helene, Welkom bij Helen. If you want to complain about your boss, press 1, if you wonder what’s for dinner tonight, press 2, if you want….’.

So I left the building. I tried to talk to a few people on the street, but it was like I had become transparent, and the sound of my voice was not reaching them. Then I understood.. It all made sense: irrelevant commercials, impossible calls, it was all clear. Consumers had made marketers irrelevant and useless. Former marketers were sent to consumer hell, or its equivalent.

Then I woke up. And now I am thinking. Maybe something should change ? Maybe yes. The question I often hear is: how to keep mass marketing alive ? Well, I have no idea. But I plead for euthanasia. I start to think that maybe we should kill it before it kills us. And that we should start to really engage with consumers, the right consumers.

A marketer

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