It’s Thursday morning, 0600 and I’m on my way to work. I’m probably not as perky as I could be, despite having a nice cup of tea for company. General outlook for the day is good, but my thought for the day is another matter: I’m wondering, what the hell is digital marketing?
Marketing has always been about communication, regardless of the strategy. Sometimes that’s sneaky-phsyco-spooky communication marketing that makes your dream of a new pair of Nikes’ and sometimes that’s shitty junk mail on your doormat style marketing. Whatever you think about those efforts to make you fall deeply in love with brand X, they are plain and simple marketing and plain and simple marketing is communication. Or am I missing the point?
The first “Digital” marketing project I worked on was way back in the days when they used acoustic couplers on phone handsets to link modems to the WWW. I vividly remember several pitches where nothing worked and I was left entertaining the room while the tech-heads searched for a longer bit of string. It certainly wasn’t digital then, and it was probably only marketing in the loosest sense of the term. Actually, back in those days anything online was like showing fire to cavemen – total shock and awe. But I digress….
Sometime after that we all started getting email. Then we started email marketing, or spamming as the cognoscenti often call it. It still wasn’t “digital”, but it was marketing. A few years later things really started to hot up, when some donut at Macromedia invented Flash. In one fell swoop we doomed ourselves to years of zero usability self-indulgent dross. But man, it was cool dross. Despite that coolness, we still weren’t called digital marketers (although I did have a great Casio digital watch that told the time in 5 countries and 3 languages….)
Around about that time I remember a brief, and quite successful run at a new world order. A group of marketers and techies so smart, so savvy, and so bloomin awesome became “New Media” experts. I was so “New Media”, right down to my CD-Rom’s but I still wasn’t digital.
“New Media” is now normal-everyday-media and those of us that fancy ourselves as a bit too cool for school are very definitely taking up the “Digital Marketing” moniker and wearing it with pride. But, going back to my original question, “What the hell is digital marketing?” More importantly, how long before it’s so retro that none of my staff have heard of it (I have a special rule, if you are too young to have heard of something I joke about you have to laugh politely and secretly Wikki it or lose you job…..I think that’s fair).
You would have needed to be deep in hiding for a very long time to have missed the latest technology. Everywhere you look everything is digital. Someone bought me a book last week and I found myself turning it over in my hands, subconsciously trying to work out what to do with it. I used to love books, but don’t they come on Kindles these days? My kids have never known a world without iPhones. They assimilate technology into their lives without pause for thought while taking it all for granted.
So why are we using the term “Digital” to describe what we do? Surely “Digital” is about ready to go the same way as “New Media” and become “Normal”. Then again, we are marketers, and so perhaps it is natural we search out new and exciting brand names for ourselves.
Thanks for reading Phillipjenkins.co.uk, A blog about normal marketing
Previously on the Critical Path
Digital Marketing engagement strategies