Brands dont matter to marketers

With the media running wild with recessionary jargon and Great Depression-like adjectives, one can’t help but feeling a bit nauseating from witnessing our financial damnation, but, and this has also probably been published to sickens end, a silver lining graces our most pessimistic beings. Apparently.

Patrick Collings reckons, and I tend to agree, that “with recession looming, innovation in marketing and public relations is becoming even more important as marketing budgets are pared back.” But not only are marketing budgets pared back, so too seems the willingness to carry our clients’ brands through these testing times. Are we to busy staring at ourselves in the mirror to notice?

Traditional marketing and advertising agencies are finding it tough to keep head above water simply because many of them don’t have the capabilities to adapt to evolving economic climates. Traditional marketing and advertising remain, and will keep remaining it seems, exactly what it is: expensive and well, rather traditional.

There’s nothing wrong with tradition of course, but alarm bells should be ringing aloud when it starts picking away from your bottom line. The fundamental problem is not that we as marketers need to cut back on our expenses or wallow in self pity, the problem lies within our stubbornness to embrace change and roll with it.

Also true to the digital marketing sphere, one that perceives itself as God’s gift to marketing, the proverbial silver lining, which is infested with self adoration and obtrusive egos. In an industry that is fairly new, but has also suffered one of the greatest economic disasters of modern times, it’s a real travesty that we demand our self righteous position as top of the marketing food chain, despite still soiling our nappies because of our dependency to leverage off our “traditionalist rivals”.

If the digital marketing arena continues on its merry ways, we should have a hall of fame of fallen angels ousted from a heaven that they themselves have created, because talking about progression doesn’t automatically imply it. Digital marketing is not as glorious yet as we have hoped, and by simply sharing our time on hopes and dreams for a fully commercialized digital future with our fellow marketers, hours which should be billable actually, will not constitute a sustainable business.

During the times of a recession it is branding, and not arrogance, that will keep businesses afoot. Reverting back to basics is not something that sits well with these “self-proclaimed progressionists” as technological advances, entrepreneurial knack and yes, idle banter accompanied with elitist back patting seem the only perverse reason each of them are happy to succumb to sleep deprivation.

I wonder where the clients’ needs fit into this.