Killing Marketing as We Know It

Christopher Carfi—Cerado, Inc.
Member

Posted 25-Aug-2004 04:04 PM
I love how SUN's President & COO, Jonathan Schwartz, dispenses with the boring, uber-sterile traditional glossy marketing approach and just tells customers what's going on.

For example, the organization has recently begun selling their systems directly on eBay. Instead of overdone PR, he states what they are doing, why they are doing it, and how it affects their strategy, customers, and partners (and, not incidently, this move also gives them perfect information on the true market price of their systems). Schwartz also uses it as a bully pulpit to raise doubts about SUN's competitors. He also dimisses a minor confidentiality leak that took place when the marching orders he gave ended up on a t-shirt wearing dog.

What SUN has done goes beyond simply giving their fromage grand a microphone, however. They actually have set up an environment that is is accessible to any Sun employee to write about anything. Sports. Music. One of their bloggers, "Mary," even states "I use this blog to explicitly and without apology market to you."

SUN is in the process of killing Marketing as we know it and, in the process, is getting closer to their customers

Christopher Carfi is a co-founder at Cerado

Graham Hill
Guru
Member

Posted 30-Aug-2004 12:44 AM
Christopher

I may be wrong, but I think you may have overdone it a bit in your assertion that Sun is in the process of "killing marketing as we know it", just because they are using a weblog.

As all those even slightly involved in high-tech recognise, the industry is full of CEOs whose self-important hype seemingly knows no bounds. Just look at the CEOs of most of the major CRM vendors for example. But nobody really cares what they say.

CEOs (and their weblogs) may come and go, but marketing as we know it has been going on since modern markets were developed in Western Europe a few hundred years ago. Marketing at its best provides a way to understand what customers want, to organise for those things to be provided and then to tell potential customers about them. As an essential part of markets, it works pretty well. And with no end in sight to the application of markets in all sorts of new ways, I suggest that the future of marketing as we know it is pretty much assured.

Graham Hill
Independent Management Consultant

Jean-Patrick (J.P.)
Member

Posted 03-Sep-2004 01:13 PM
If memory serves... this must be the 2nd of 3rd time I hear predict the end of marketing as we know it in the last 10 years!

Blogs are just a new form of Marketing Campaign to me ... A trend maybee! It will be interesting to see.

I may be wrong of course! But I think it's safe to predict that I will keep enjoying my Super Bowl adds for the next few years! :-)

PeterRichards
Member

Posted 14-Mar-2005 05:40 PM
I would like to make a comment or two about the ICONIC DOOM that is apparently facing marketing. I am not of the opinion that Webloging is a bad thing for marketing. At its most basic level, marketing is simply a tool used by us to hold the hand of the consumer and help them to discover that our brand is the best one out there for them. Unfortunately it is a tool that a number of other businesses also use, so the result is noise.

In order to cut through the noise we (as an industry) have come up with newer and often more devious and manipulating techniques of ‘helping' the consumer to discover our brand over other brands. Webloging is simply a new way for businesses to be in touch with their consumers. To be honest direct mail shots are a hideous way of communicating to the public, cheap, tacky, de-valuing to the image of a prestigious business. But, if it gets results and seems to fit in with your business' ethic and image then go for it. After all, we all need to get our message across, even Dell had to mail shot and use web pop ups to inform the public of its ‘no middleman' policy. Look at them now, Dell is seen as being one of the most revolutionary management led businesses in the world, running on around 7% profits compared to the 15% that competitors are aiming to make. We all have a message, we all need to spread it, and we just all do it in different ways.

Pete