If you want me to love you, treat me as a person not as a consumer.

I want to chat about something that’s been on my mind for a while now. In truth, people have probably always felt this way but I’ve worked in ‘marketing’ so, I would have segmented and targeted audiences – mea culpa.

We are human beings – not consumers.

I am writing this, not as a confession but as a rationale as to why all of us in business need to be smarter about marketing.

The societal change that’s underway right now will affect much more than the traditional marketing we practitioners knew and loved so well. You know what I’m talking about – the MadMen thingy. The funnels of love, big campaigns, slick TV ads telling the customer why they’d be better off with your product / service. It was all about agreeing a message with the client, broadcasting it to a target audience and promoting it ‘through-the-line’. Sure a lot of it worked – (nowadays that impact is lessening), but it wasn’t really about building any real relationship with the consumer, if we’re to be honest.

Authentic relationships.

As I mentioned, the change that’s happening right now is affecting much more than marketing but it may have serious implications for it and thereby clients, if not addressed. Look at what’s happened to the music industry, what’s happening in traditional media and even what’s happening to TV viewership.  After decades of broadcasting messages at people, we need to take off our blinkers and realise that society’s attitude, to almost everything, is different. Not only from a geopolitical or economic point of view (which they are) but the individuals that we so badly want to ‘sell’ to, are changing, big time. They don’t want to be sold to anymore – they want relationships. This is important for business because it is through relationships that purchase decisions are now been guided and made. So if business can develop the kind of authentic relationships that last, we have a chance of survival. Today, the public wants what they want; business can adjust to the new reality or fool ourselves into oblivion.

So if the essence of business has not changed and is still all about relationships with people – what do we need to change? Our attitude, that’s what. There are loads of new and better tools available to enable businesses to be smarter about their relationships. Let’s use them properly and everybody will be a winner.

This is our very first blog. It is our intention to provide readers with marketing tips and timesavers in future blogs. If you liked our content, by all means subscribe by clicking through the pink button to receive our regular updates.  Of course if you want to get in touch, leave your details and perhaps we might meet for a chat, cheers.      Jim – O’C&K