Complexity and Technology are not the marketing cure-all

here's a bit of a mashup of Tom Asacker and Seth Godin, I'm linking their points because they seem to make more sense in corroborating each other than separately.

Tom quotes Eric Schmidt, (read the whole post in a new window, I've cut quite a bit of the middle out)

'Our business strategy is not to compete.'...
...People are awash in new products, information and ideas, and therefore are less likely to stay focused for any length of time on one message or one product. And in this supersaturated economy, sustained audience attention is the foundation of brand endurance. So what's a marketer to do?

he goes on to say

...Instead of agency lapdogs, marketers must become innovators. They must work like hell to get sustained attention by focusing on and delivering the value desired by their audience. Forget about competing. Forget about positioning. Yes, you read me right. These old school notions of business success are obsolete.

Marketing isn't a complex process with complex solutions. It’s simple. Not easy mind you, but simple nonetheless. Develop something that people value enough to trade their time, attention and/or money for, and do it at a profit. Simple. The challenge is to continuously change and innovate, and achieve this simple concept over time. And that challenge, my marketing friends, is your job."

add to this idea Seth's realisation that it's not the technology of Google we love,

"Your success was down to marketing, not technology."

he delivers that gem and many others here in a video from his talk to Google employees.

I've had people tell me I'm a techno geek, I guess I am, but I'm not selling you the same sort of connectivity, nor are many of the marketing ideas I propose complex or technology based. What I'm selling is something simple and different, and that's an attempt to get you to think simply, and to utilise whatever simple ideas so we can to reach out into the marketplace and connect honestly with your clients, deliver them some fantastic products they'll love and use if only we can connect them to the idea that they'd like to use them if they knew a little more about them.

Tagged with:

• think
• strategy
• new-thinking