Right under your nose

About a month ago one of my favorite bloggers (Mitch Joel), wrote a post entitled "Four Current Trends That Will Change Marketing Forever.  The four trends that Mitch mentioned were: touch, analytics, one-line, and location aware. It was a pretty good post and I agreed with much of his analysis. I did have some disagreements, but that conversation is for another day.

As he always does, he poses a question at the end of his posts. Now as can sometimes be the case, the responses can be just as interesting, if not more so, than the article itself (so I often make it a point to read through his comments). His ending question on this particular post was:

What current trends do you think will become business and marketing standards going forward?   

As I was perusing through his responses, I wasn't seeing any remarks about the trends that I was having conversations with my colleagues about. In a way I was thinking "how could you miss these trends?" Then again, as can often be the case, things that seem obvious to you, aren't to others.

On occasion, I'll leave a reply at the end of his posts. So on this one in particular, I did leave a comment about my thoughts on the matter. So I responded with the insights below and the trends that I think are hiding in plain sight:

• Business in a customer world vs. a consumer world. Some folks may simply say the two are the same, but I would argue the opposite. When you differentiate between the two, the very idea of what marketing is begins to change. My good friend Mike Bonifer did an awesome post on it here. http://www.gamechangers.com/index.html/archives/1713

• Marketing the context instead of the content. As is evident with YouTube and twitter (or any "social media" platform) any Tom, Dick and Harry can create content. It's understanding and knowing how to present context first, then creating content that enables what you are doing to really become powerful. It's just like when you take a quote out of context, it can mean something totally different than what its intent was. Context is king. Not content. A brief talk on it here .

• Marketing as narrative. Andy Warhol blurred the lines between fine art and pop art (positioning himself as an icon of the 20th century). With the digital landscape exploding left and right, the demarcation between business and social/cultural continues to shift as well. How does "marketing," as a business word, continue to survive in a world constantly being changed by social technology that's creating a brave new "interactive" landscape? Marketing (as the idea currently exists) is limited in a dynamic multi-channel world. Narrative identification is not. It allows much more agility in an ever-changing marketplace. Identifying a narrative allows a brand and its customers to discover vs. pushing a message about what the market wants (or thinks we want) and then marketing that.

Now from where I sit, customer vs. consumer, context and narrative aren't super secretive, hard to get to, hiding in the corner of a dark cave, ideas. They're pretty common concepts, and even obvious on some levels. But depending on who you're talking to, that may not be true. Things can often and simply, be hiding right underneath your nose.