For years marketers have been in denial. All manner of marketing and branding problems can be fixed by brilliant advertising and and communication programmes.
For those of us who have worked on the inside of the industry we have seen many a poorly thought through business proposition or product idea lofted to “greatness” through a little advertising agency magic. We shook our heads in dismay at the lack of marketing thinking but we took the clients money anyway and tried to create some ad magic.
I believe the Communications-led marketing model is now seriously broken. The communications landscape has become much more unforgiving of poorly thought through marketing. No longer can marketers throw money at this problem. I believe I new standard for marketing will be created with diminishing consumer attention for interruption based communications. Brands and product ideas will need to be more compelling, that means a higher level of design thinking will be required at the conception of the idea and not at the communication stage. Creative resources will therefore shift upstream.
This will have significant implications for creative agencies, the winners will be those who know how to retrain their strategic and creative resources into brand, product and service idea people rather than communications ideas people.
Invitro Innovation 