Key excerpts from: "Behind Closed Doors: What’s On the Mind Of Chief Mktg Officers -@JOwyang" + my footnote
CMOs admitted they were losing power to the empowered consumer. A few years ago, the conversation may have been one of resistance, argument or fear of these changes. Yet this group had moved on, accepted the changes, and had already put into place programs to benefit from market changes. I liked Greg Walsh’s [...] analogy that previously marketers were used to ‘Bowling’, where marketers could easily throw a message down the aisle and hit the pins with great confidence. Now [...] it was more like ‘Pinball’ where a marketer could load the message up, shoot it out, but have no idea where it will end up.
Social was on the lips of nearly everyone. [...] This wasn’t the usual social rhetoric of the 101 questions, but the overall group asked sophisticated questions around the change in influence, reputation management, and integration with existing programs. For example, the Ritz, has already woven in social to their experience, each hotel manager spend over an hour reviewing the online conversation (even Tweets) at their location before walking the grounds each morning.
Social is difficult to measure – yet marketers know they must be there. [...] “Over 70% of the CMOs polled will do more in the social space this coming year”. Yet, when asked “How do you measure success?” there wasn’t a clear answer, it’s still baffling. [...] Similar to the difficulties measuring analog marketing, they’re ok with not being able to measure everything in social – they now see the value.
Beyond monitoring, insight from the social sphere is untapped. Social media monitoring is just the first baby step, most companies haven’t tapped into what the data actually means.[...]
My BOLD highlights.
This is a great "finger on the pulse" piece by @JOwyang showing how quickly corporate attitudes are changing in this new landscape. It sure feels like these folks were light-years ahead of Old Media, which still largely appears firmly lodged in a place between defiance and denial...
[ See e.g. "Why the Media Is Taking So Long to Die" http://bit.ly/3A8BEO
Also, if you haven't read it yet, my recent post:
