In Marketing, Don't Confuse the Medium for the Message

With such a wide array of tools at our disposal, keep the focus on the content and design.

By Patrick Hainault
08/18/2010 -12:54 PM

A well-meaning mentor recently asked me a seemingly innocuous question that threw me for a loop. “What percentage of your time,” he asked, “do you spend doing digital marketing?”

My answer involved fingers being counted, a couple of digits carrying over and some wild guess at long division.

It was, of course, the wrong answer. As is too often the case, a much better comeback only came long after the moment had passed. What I wish I had answered would have gone something like: “I don’t know. What percentage of your work involves electricity?”

Such latent truculence, I believe, is the natural response to a decade of watching marketers allow the tools to be confused for the thing itself. Marketing is the process involved in promoting and selling a product or service. What matters here is the promoting and the selling, and to conduct these endeavors, any appropriate process will do. The tools are just that—digital or analog, they remain means to an end.

Thanks to the ongoing explosion in communications technologies, available tools continue to multiply. A marketer can reach customers or prospects via mail, online, on the phone via voice, text or graphics, in person, on TV or radio, at events, through ride-alongs, in magazine or newspaper pages, on billboards, and on and on.

At this point, even the most analog of marketing channels will be supported by heavy digital artillery. To wit, newsstand which, save for a handful of retailers, makes Wrigley Field look like an early adopter, is increasingly being managed with the help of robust data wrung through sophisticated analyses. The odd retailer promotion may even involve plasma screens, or 2D mobile barcodes that offer additional content.

The old workhorse direct mail has turned the corner too. Until about two years ago, it was gospel that suggesting alternate, non-immediate reply methods such as online ordering would depress response. By now, the opposite is true. The absence of a URL will be damaging, and an increasing percent of responders prefer to sidestep the oh-so-far mailbox and log on to order instead.

In other words, a hefty dose of digital is getting infused in the planning, designing and fulfilling of direct mail—and of all traditional channels.

By now, every audience development channel is heavily reliant on various digital tools.

In July, Laurence Green, chairman of advertising agency Fallon, put it more dramatically: “When everything becomes digital, then nothing is.” This would have made a zinger of a reply to the question that launched my tirade.

Beyond its sweeping elegance, this assessment is remarkable for the implications it carries. For one, it means that energy expanded hashing out distinctions between digital and non-digital is best spent on more pressing questions. It confirms that the distinction is archaic and barely relevant.

More importantly, it suggests that all can turn their sights back on what has always mattered: Developing the most effective possible value propositions, brand positions, calls to actions, product promotion. In other words, marketing.

Pre-digital folks may in fact remember a time when it was possible to be an accomplished multi-channel marketer, which then mostly involved the USPS and phone lines, without having much knowledge of the intricacies of print presses or bulk mail center logistics. There were—and still are—very knowledgeable folks whose own livings depended on helping marketers navigate through channel-specific arcana.

When everything is digital, the technology behind a given marketing effort becomes an operational concern, not a marketing one. What acquires greater importance than ever is the ability to ferret out the words and designs that will make consumers pause and take notice, to have a clear understanding of context and opportunities—to understand what resonates.

As communication tools continue to proliferate, one key challenge of the savvy marketer would be the ability to discern which tool is most appropriate for each goal. E-mail and social media all serve their purpose, but so do telemarketing and direct mail. When everything is digital, the medium is definitely not the message.