...or we'll find someone who can!

Everyday a lot of discussions are being held for social media, networking, ability to connect. Colleagues and partners seem amazed by the fast tech-development, and the pace we can't follow. True! But I was wondering does "tweeting" mean you've figured it out? Does knowing how to "friend" someone qualify you as a modern marketer of the new communications age? Hardly, I think. In fact, reaching that lofty goal is less about the tactics we employ (tweet, uploading a web execution of a campaign, etc), and more about our overall approach to the complexities of the modern consumer.

Our jobs are becoming more demanding. Big businesses now operate in a multi-market, multi-lingual, and frequently multi-brand world; a world filled with commercial and cultural nuances. The modern marketers I respect are finding ways to address these nuances by developing cross-market and cross-brand efficiencies and equities. They're fostering smarter collaboration across teams, agencies, and disciplines, producing big brand ideas that transcend tactical executions and work in markets of varying sophistication, and they're leveraging their scale to lower costs while focusing their marketing euros in the right growth areas. All while producing great work.

My personal fascination lies in the fact that digital marketing -and at a minimum internet based technology- is helping to drive evolution. Digital marketing is at different stages depending on which markets you are working. But in almost all instances, it seems to function as the great connector that helps to bring cross-channel experiences to the consumer. Digital, once deemed complex and expensive by the advertising world, actually offers the ability to produce re-usable libraries of common tools that can be shared across markets and brands, empowering them to focus their budgets on brilliant creative ideas instead of unnecessary technology that had been used multiples times in the last year by other agencies and brand teams. Social media monitoring tools can be set up for enterprise businesses and deliver intelligence to multiple brands across multiple markets at reduced costs while facilitating a deeper understanding of the consumer. Web based collaboration tools are helping to produce better ideas, faster, with equal input from brand agencies, digital agencies, and media agencies.

I'm not discrediting the importance of innovation. I just think we need to step back and reevaluate what makes us pat someone on the back for being in a "digital master class" that understands modern marketing... Some of the biggest companies in the world who frequently get accused of being laggards are realizing how scale, Ideas and digital marketing play VERY well together, and could form the cement in their marketing initiatives. See right above the Adidas viral campaign example (preparing for World Cup obviously) and you will get my point. In the end, modern marketers are putting their money where there mouth is and, as a result, giving their agencies what amounts to a thinly veiled, but no less justifiable ultimatum: bring us THE Idea, show us results, the analytics to support them, and develop the creative in a cost effective way, or we'll find someone who can. We should all hear the warning. Those who don't? Well, then they don't know a "tweet" about modern marketing and communications.