Get your marketers to live and act in the 'NOW'

Welcome (back) to Omnikarma - where you get to read about football, marketing, leadership or occasionally about life in general. My previous post 'Strategic Sweet Spots' received some overwhelming readership and feedback - thank you for all your comments, critiques and feedback.

Today, I will write about the importance of marketers to live in the NOW and some techniques to get you and your teams to live and breathe the NOW.

About two years ago I had started discussing this topic with a close friend, Mr. Marc Teerlink. Marc's son and my daughter Alexis went to the same school in Amsterdam. Marc, as some of you may know is one of the geniuses at IBM and one of the leading minds around the topic of Big Data. (you may want to watch his TEDex talk at  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqbR4BhzPNM). Marc spoke to me about the cutting edge work that he and his firm were doing in the area of social listening and how they had 'Brand rooms' for big Consumer Goods companies in the US to watch real time trend developments in the 'sports drink market'. Brand managers and even senior leaders from his client firms were actively encouraged to spend their working day at the social media listening rooms and see how little bubbles of micro trends were popping up in remote parts of the world and then moving across the globe as more and more consumers got involved in the conversations. Then the brand would get involved in the conversation (at relevant times) to 'subtly' insert branded content into these conversations. This really fascinated me and although this happened light years ago (ahem, back in 2012) - I genuinely thought this was science fiction.

Fast forward two years on. Yesterday, I was speaking to a former colleague from an ex-employer and we discussed how she was progressing at work. From what she explained, it felt to me that all that  she and her marketing team were doing over the last four months was focusing on analysis of the last twelve months and creating the 2015 financial plan. Her Brand Managers were spending twelve and fourteen hour days poring through 'BIG DATA' of the past year to create even more 'BIG DATA' for the next year. I couldn't help but compare and contrast the two situations - one company (the IBM client) using BIG DATA to live in the NOW and another - using BIG DATA of the past to create fictional BIG DATA of the future - and in my opinion both pieces of data will end up being useless to the end consumers.

Which brings me to the main point of this piece today - what kind of MARKETER are YOU ? What kind of MARKETING philosophy do you live and breathe. To evaluate whether you market in the NOW - take this simple test:

1. I spend most of my work week creating plans for my consumers TODAY - YES/NO
2. I spend some of my work week checking feedback from Facebook posts/Social media listening/product reviews of my brand/visiting my stores/checking feedback from my e-store - YES/NO
3. I encourage my team to go outside the office and meet real consumers every week - YES/NO
4. My team is USUALLY working on projects that consumers can experience TODAY or in the COMING FORTNIGHT - YES/NO 

If you have answered YES to all 4  questions above, then you definitely are a NOW marketer. If you have scored fewer than 2 YES, then I suggest you continue reading.

Welcome to the new reality -  Our world has changed since yesterday. And it certainly has changed since this morning. If your marketing is not keeping up to the NOW, then you and your brand will be a dinosaur by the end of today. To bring my point alive, let us look some relevant marketing topics trending around the world RIGHT NOW !.

1. Kim Kardashian has tried to break (down) the internet on Nov 12 by showing her assets on the Papermag.
http://www.papermag.com/2014/11/kim_kardashian.php And a whole bunch of brands responded to this trend (some even made fun of the BIG Kardashian), did yours ?

2. Alibaba (the biggest e-commerce site in China) posted single day (yes single day - Nov 11) sales of $9.3 Billion.
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/alibaba-and-the-truth-behind-the-singles-day-sales-numbers-2014-11-16

Did your company or brand profit from any of that action ?

3. Amazon.com has probably cut the retail prices of your brand on their e-commerce site in the last hour.
http://www.zoolert.com/habitat/

Have other retailers selling your brand followed suit ? Is this impacting your bottom line ?

4. John Lewis, the British retailer released their Christmas ad on November 6 - featuring penguins (and the Youtube video had already garnered 15 Million viewsas I wrote this piece this morning).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iccscUFY860

If your brand is available at John Lewis, is your Brand Manager actively immersing your brand in the millions of 'penguin' conversations happening across the U.K (and probably outside as well) ?

You get it  - right ?

In summary, in this world where our consumers are constantly being exposed to new messages every nano second - there is only way to be a nimble marketer. And that is to focus on the NOW. I encourage marketers around the world to spend even more time listening to consumers and reacting to their changing habits and aspirations in real time. Make sure that you and your teams are embracing technology to provide you and your company the tools to listen and act in real time. If you don't act NOW, then someone else is going to eat you for lunch - NOW !! Good luck with focusing your energies on marketing in the NOW.

And don't forget to send me your feedback - well of course - right NOW (and if you would like to follow my blog, do sign up) !!