The blog

Once upon a time marketers were perceived as people who simply sold hot air wrapped in a fluffy story. Anno 2014 storytellers are considered the new marketers. But is storytelling really revolutionary? Isn’t it just a timeless or indeed already old-school skill?

These turbulent times of economic recession force companies to reinvent their business and to stand out from the competition. Remarkably, it seems that a lot of companies seek the Holy Grail in consumer irritation. Communicating every message everywhere at every time is the new strategy of marketers who only try to generate sales at the expense of what the customer really wants.

Yesterday I wanted to make a recipe everyone knows and most of us love: macaroni & cheese. I took my iPhone, found one of the many similar recipes and bought the necessary ingredients. After finishing the most difficult part, the bechamel sauce, I was very pleased with the result. Now imagine someone telling me ‘make a good, classic “mac & cheese” but you have to do something with chocolate as one of the ingredients’. Everyone, including myself, would declare that person a lunatic, because we all know that you can’t make a good mac & cheese using chocolate. Chocolate is an irrelevant ingredient when making a classic mac & cheese.

Many people say that a dog is man’s best friend. From them, we can learn a lot about loyalty. My dog is an English Cocker Spaniel and she is loyal until the point where her nose and instinct takes over. Since it is a hound, the instinct takes over most of the time. The same principle can be applied to the subject I wish to discuss, namely the new trend of customer loyalty cards. I will comment on this trend by giving my own experiences as a catering entrepreneur.

Combining memes and predictions from blogs and marketing fora all over the world with hands-on working experience as a digital marketing consultant in different types of companies in various industries lets me take an objective look at recent evolutions in the marketer’s landscape. Based on these findings I identified 5 key topics for marketing professionals to watch.

Since Google launched their social media platform Google + in 2011 a lot of articles have been written about what the future will bring for the sociosphere and what impact ‘another social networks’ will have on the ecosystem. In the beginning there were more negative comments, but now you gradually hear opinion leaders changing their minds. Two years later we see that Google has made an enormous amount of technical changes to its platform AND is adapting the strategy for its other products in their portfolio, all this in favor of Google+.

You can’t get around it: professional cycling is in crisis. The road ahead is definitively steeper and longer then the Mont Ventoux… Recently 5 pro- and continental teams were quitting because their sponsor turned off the money tap. Consequently more than 100 professional cyclists are desperately looking for a new team!

The English royal baby has been an inspiration for different types of industries. The medical world used the birth to motivate Belgian mums to leave hospital after a day, in order to save money. The fashion industry was interested to see what the future Queen of England wore when she left hospital and still today when the media catches a glimpse of the baby, this will be broadcasted all over the world. This event inspired me, since I am working on a project at a baby retailer, to write a point of view on targeted marketing of pregnant women.

In today’s world, online media are extremely important. No doubt about that an online conversation can reach hundreds, even thousands (and many more) with just one simple click. We all know some famous online campaigns that went viral, but overall, this remains quite exceptional. Some viral campaigns became a worldwide hit, many more other trials were not picked up at all.

Last week The House of Marketing organized, together with the Belgian Marketing & Management Association (BMMA), the first lunch where CEO’s talk about the marketing challenges of tomorrow. The idea is to better understand the mutual expectations and to provide inspiration on how CEO’s and marketers can be better aligned.