The blog

“It’s not about surviving in disruption; it’s about becoming the disruptor.” After a hectic taxi ride in the streets of Dublin and a high-tech cappuccino with extra chocolate very kindly offered at the Dropbox stand, it is this quote from Digiday’s president Brian Morrisey that truly woke me up on the morning of November 4. Chewing on breakfast popcorn, mildly flavored with Google caramel, I looked around the auditorium filled with 500+ marketers eagerly scribbling down Brian’s every word on their iPad or smartphone, taking a WebSummit selfie, and/or (well, some people seem to manage to do it all) typing a catchy Twitter feed. Which of them would lead their teams toward not only surviving in the age of disruption, but thriving and growing? Which of them would initiate change, not just be immersed in it? Which of them would not be disrupted, but be the disruptors?

If you want to go down the path of disruption, technology is not the end state. Consumer experience is; technology is merely an accelerator!

The sharing economy is everywhere. As marketers, we should realize that this phenomenon can have a huge impact on existing business models, so we’d better get ready for a future where sharing will become the new owning.

I believe the marketing department needs to be centered on the often used metaphor of Velcro management: Cohesive when in place, but easily rearranged when the situation and organization strategy change. 76% of the respondents in the Yearly Marketing Survey 2014 believe in such an agile and up-to-date organizational structure. Of course, you can’t constantly rip the company apart. A certain level of continuity needs to be maintained.

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+.