Dear Director of Marketing

This letter serves to indicate that you are being dismissed immediately. While you have offered many years of loyal services and proved at many occasions your valor and hard-working ethic, it has recently become clear that you just don’t get what I’m saying.
You have been mandated to attend to my needs and make sure the organization communicates my values and emotions. Yet it has become clear to me and the rest of the organization that you un-lawfully hijacked your role into a travesty of control. I believe I should be heard and understood. You believe I should never address the people except with costly advertising campaigns and press releases. I believe I am flexible and changing in my views. You believe in norms and linger endlessly on what font people should use when talking about me. You believe I am an ingredient in an advertising plan. Yet I am the only reason the entire organization exists. These irreconcilable differences put each of us at opposite ends of the world as I understand it. Products you chose to design and manufacture and sell are mere extensions of the experience I provide. While you focused on the millions of dollars in advertising you wasted trying to break into every conversation, TV show, email, web page and outdoor banner, you failed to create meaningful lasting relationships. I am feeling now more alone and disconnected than ever before. If your insist that job was spending money and accounting for how many people you interrupted, you did a splendid job. Your schmoozing with agency account managers and awards proves nothing to me. You ignore my needs to connect and live. You ignore my role and rather focused on the sizzle, not the steak. Charts and studies and focus groups might back up you on some claims but we both know you’re a fraud. I am hereby relieving you of your duties and wishing you well in your future endeavors. Hoping this will allow you some time off to think of what you have done to me.

Sincerely yours,
YOUR BRAND

Online marketing strategy

Online marketing strategy IS NOT:

repeating statistics from research and pointing a finger in the general market direction.

providing 50-page benchmark studies made up from screenshots.

bringing an outside consultant that is as detached from the operations as from the business rules and output of the company.

an online media plan with a next-steps keynote slide covered in buzzwords.

a recipe.

made up of disposable stunts hoping to become the next big viral.


Online marketing strategy IS

extending every aspect of the brand and company online and being accountable for it.

listening and trusting all team members, especially operations and creative.

seeing an opportunity in the market and intuition telling you to go for it.

cohesive with the entire business strategy

getting creative and taking risks.

unique for every campaign, brand and product.

as much a product strategy as a marketing strategy.

Le Massif video banner- Météomedia

Pretty cool video banner for Le Massif ski resort today on Météomedia.com
Great creative execution. I like the dreamy look of the ski vid and the sequences, but I'm not too sure about the media strategy. The season is winding down, people are back into spring and summer mode, and the resort is closing tomorrow for the season. If at least the landing page was targeted for next year season's passes, maybe, but this is a doh! as far as I can tell. Maybe some remnant impressions from the 2008-2009 campaign left over, but IMHO, a "thanks for a great season, see you next year" promo would have been much better. But it's ok, I still love that mountain and the amazing rides I had there.

This is not a blog post

This is not a blog post about the new media revolution
About how the web changes everything for everyone
About how agencies might or might not be relevant anymore.
It's definitely not a blog post about web 2.0
About traditional media versus digital media
I'm not going to write a blog post about blogging, Twitter or Facebook
Or about the future of online advertising
And the future of the newspaper industry or traditional media.
I will definitely not take a stance on who Google might be buying this week.
This is not a blog post on how to land a job in social media
Or how building online communities is changing the world
And this blog post will not reveal the magic recipe on how to score the next big viral video.
I am not writing a blog post on how such and such online metric doesn't match another
And how such and such method might or might not be accurate enough.

This IS a blog post that assumes you've already read all the MANY other posts that DO talk about it. Endlessly.
This IS a blog post that will try to focus on 1 thing only.
This blog post will ask you 1 question and hopefully you have an answer:

WHAT ARE YOU DOING RIGHT NOW TO MAKE HUMANS AND BRANDS HAPPIER ?