A question of survival

What happens if
we put brand messaging, persuasion and managing customer relationships behind
us? Answer: a chance to transcend marketing’s inbuilt perpetual mediocrity. None of
these ‘essential ingredients’ of marketing actually work as intended, and they
have dangerous counterproductive effects. They add expense, while undermining
trust.

So we need to find an alternative way
forward.

Brands don’t engage with consumers by
bombarding them with messages, they achieve their goals by engaging with
consumers in ways which demonstrate
their brand values.

It’s almost impossible to change the
attitudes and behaviours of people who don’t want to change, even with new
secret weapons such as behavioural economics. The way forward is to align
better to individuals desire to make better decisions and to implement these
decisions better – in other words, to create really good reasons to engage with the brand.

The very term ‘customer relationship
management’ explains why it’s a walking disaster. It’s unilateral not mutual. The
best way to destroy a relationship is to try to manage what the other person does.
We have to look passed this control agenda to embrace the other side of the
coin. Customers want to manage their relationships with organisations (‘Vendor
Relationship Management’ or VRM). The value opportunity happens when the two
agendas – CRM and VRM – meet.

It’s now becoming possible to engage with
consumers in ways that does
demonstrate brand values, that does align
with consumers’ decision-making priorities and processes, and which recognises
customers as relationship managers in their own right. It boils down to
reinventing brands as information services – rethinking branding for an
information/knowledge age rather than an industrial age.

This rethink isn’t only becoming
possible, it’s becoming necessary. Organisations, brands and marketers that
fail to do it risk marginalising themselves. Why? Because of the fundamental changes
now sweeping through the world of information (including personal information)
management.

Marketing reinvention isn’t about nice,
interesting theories. It’s about survival and competitive edge.

Alan
Mitchell      www.ctrl-shift.co.uk
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