Meatball Sundae: Is Your Marketing out of Sync?
by Seth Godin

Meatball Sundae is the definitive guide to the fourteen
trends no marketer can afford to ignore. It explains what to do
about the increasing power of stories, not facts; about shorter and
shorter attention spans; and about the new math that says five
thousand people who want to hear your message are more valuable
than five million who don’t.

Buy. Read. Review. Discuss.

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quote!

One: Budgets down, percent of spend up.

It’s common lore that when times are bad, the first thing to get cut is the marketing budget. That won’t change. What will change is that when evaluating what to cut, the CFOs of the world will look at what is the most expensive, from CMOs to TV spots and “lop” them off like the tops of a strawberry without a hesitation or regret (has anyone regretted cutting those ugly tops off?). Then we will start looking at some of the fundamental marketing campaigns and efforts and ask “what’s giving us an ROI?”. So, we’ll cut some more print ads and tradeshows because cannot prove out the ROI and probably some of the creative staff behind such (so this trickles down from corporate marketing departments to the agency depts.) and slice a little piece of that strawberry that looks bruised.

So, what’s left. The core of the marketing department or team that actually gets work done. The online marketing efforts like search and email because we could show click through and conversion numbers and a few other fundamental efforts that are important to the company. In the end, the actual dollar amount of the Interactive campaigns may go down, but the percent of the newly slashed budget will go up. So, there will be more need for supporting success of these campaigns and smarter decision (i.e. less spend on so many of these ridiuculous banner ads that still get small conversion rates).

Two: Cream will rise to the top.

So both in the internal marketing departments of agencies and the corporate marketing department, those that do good work will shine. There efforts and ROI producing efforts will finally be recognized and the “fat” that has been riding on their tenure or pure creative genius will drown in their own egos.

This will also be true for Interactive (Search, Website, Usability, Email …) firms. Those that do good work, are adept at proving ROI of their efforts for clients will see a lot more business (the old rich get richer). And the myriad of traditional boutiques, 3 man development shops and large agencies that “do” interactive as opposed to “excel and specialize” in interactive, will suffer.

The large firm will be hit hardest because they have the highest fees and demand the greatest share of the budget just like their golfing buddies at the top (CMOs) and exorbinant TV commericials. Developers will have to work hard to focus on web development and not pretend to do all things for all people (i.e. SEO, Design, IA, Usability) as their lack luster efforts in non-core activities will stand out. And finally the boutiques that say we are “full service” will have to determine their core competency before their clients tell them they are “Full” of something else.

Three: Perfect Storm for long term adoption

In the end, this will lead to the perfect storm for Online Marketing. First, the marketing industry as a whole will become more educated on the space due to the scrutiny placed. So executives will finally start seeing the light when it comes to matching budgets with consumer preferences (i.e. more time spent online so more budget needed).

Second, by naturally weathering the budget cutting storm and getting bigger percent of spend, Online will be able to gain bigger dollars as budgets increase when the sun starts shining. Additionally, the scrutiny on ROI will impress the CFOs of the world and they will become fans too.

Lastly, as a human race, we will be spending more time online. More time communicating through social networks. More time bargain hunting for deals online and cutting out the broker or middleman, so as that contuniues to change our buying and social behavior, we will see the need to better address the needs of such a high adoption rate as the clouds clear.

Summary
In the final analysis, we will all be hurt by a recession in the immediate short term. Even the quality online marketers, because budgets get frozen for 6 -12 months in addition to being cut. There will be less money out there , so that will make it harder for all to make a buck. And deals will take longer, be more competitive and have a lot more ‘proof’ needed from the vendor. That written, the Online marketing community (agency and brand marketers) will suffer a lot less then their old school brethren. For the long-term, like cheap broadband during the 2001 -2003 down turn accelarated online adoption, so will this recession bring to light the unneeded marketing/advertising spend and shift its dollars with it’s focus.