Why Marketing-Gimbal

Let’s first start with a definition of a gimbal from wikipedia:

A gimbal is a pivoted support that allows the rotation of an object about a single axis. A set of two gimbals, one mounted on the other with pivot axes orthogonal, may be used to allow an object mounted on the innermost gimbal to remain vertical regardless of the motion of its support. For example, shipboard compasses, stoves and even drink holders typically use gimbals to keep them upright with respect to the horizon despite the ship's pitching and rolling. In other words its the structure that keeps the ships compass level in the middle of a storm.

I thought that Marketing-Gimbal would be a fitting title to my blog. Why? you might ask. Well I think we’re in the middle of a storm as well. A marketing storm filled with hype, bull shit and fear. Especially if you we’re born when LP’s were around. For those of you that don’t know what an LP is send me an email. You see when you work in a large corporation like I do and people start to hear of things like RSS, Blogs, Social Media..etc a few things start to happen:

1.      A few folks bright enough to read a magazine seize on these hot topics, and rattle the cages to a point where upper management (who have no idea what these terms mean) start thinking the ship is going to synch if we don’t do "RSS".

2.      Others have no clue and put their head in the sand, and hope all this stuff goes away so we can just place our pretty advertising in the coolest magazine, and call it a day.

3.      The rest of us have to sift through the BS and try to understand what it really means, and how to leverage these new tools in way that increases our marketing effectiveness, and efficiencies.

What’s more interesting is I find my “over 40” colleagues completely confusing themselves, and truly believing that the world as we know it, in a marketing context, is coming to an end. As they see it the fundamentals of marketing have changed, it’s a totally new world and you must be 12 to understand it. You’ll here them use terms like: I just don’t get all this stuff, or why did he throw a "sheep" at me?

Of course a few of the over 40 crowd completely embrace all this new hype even though they really don’t know what it means either. You know the ones. They start dressing in black, and start to sound like Tim Gunn, of Project Runway, as they tell you that you "so don’t get it", and that you need to be put out to pasture.

So why not start a blog for the over 40 marketing professional. A blog where we can explore all this hype. You see I don’t think the fundamentals for marketing have changed at all. I think the tools, the communication channels, and the way in which people collect, create, and share information has. This means there are new opportunities to link our messages together, cast a wider net, and generate more demand. The new challenge of marketing professionals is more about how to optimize against reaching a networked audience versus a completely new playing field and rules.

 

Comments

[mdierken]

Sounds like a good theme to start your blog with. I look forward to reading more in the future.

[Steve]

Excellent topical area for you to be writing on Ed. Welcome to the blogosphere.

[Sami Hero]

Hi Ed,

It seems we only communicate through web 2.0 ;-)

At any rate, your topic is a good one and very timely as many marketing organizations are trying to make a science out of the demand generation process. Personally, I believe that adding new ways for customers and prospects to find, browse, learn and transact with you increases the relevance and provides a great context. The traditional direct marketing activities (even when well targeted) still have a lot of misses and waste... when we turn the "table" and let the users engage with us regardless where they come from (Google, Yahoo, MS etc., social networks or some other online means) we will increase the relevance and get much better conversions with very little waste.

This is an exciting topic and exciting times - good luck with your endeavor!

Sami

[C. Edward Brice]

Thanks for all the comments guys

[Frank Koehntopp]

Welcome - good to see another SAP colleague joining the fun ;)