The new wave of marketing

Mark Phibbs, the senior director for Asia-Pacific marketing at Adobe Systems, has been witnessing the start of a big shift in the world of marketing over the past couple of years.

In his opinion, there is now a renaissance in marketing, with the chief marketing officers (CMOs) now becoming the new chief financial officers (CFOs) of organisations, he was quoted as saying in an interview with India’s Business Standard.

In other words, online marketing is becoming the new way of marketing.

Gone are the days of traditional marketing tools. Today, more and more marketers go online to do their work, but the unchanged consumer mindset, especially among the older generations, remains an issue in the era of digital marketing.

“The young generations are more eager to change than older folks. Before it wasn’t easy to do across platforms – from a TV and Web campaign to print and mobile devices (such as smart phones and tablet computers of both the Apple and Android operating systems). Now, you can produce and distribute one content across all these platforms,” he says.

In this transformation, advertisers, publishers and media firms must all be involved.

Phibbs expects the shift towards digital marketing to be more prominent over the next five years. He cites Adobe as an example, as the major software firm now spends 74 per cent of its marketing budget online, largely because most of its customers are online.

American Apparel is another example in which digital marketing tools have been used widely across different platforms.

According to Phibbs, about 30 per cent of the marketing budgets in the US are now online, and the ratio is expected to rise rapidly in the coming years.

In the Asia-Pacific region, the online marketing budget is now about 10 per cent of the total on average.

 Online marketing is creating a new world for consumers, who can be targeted more precisely according to their needs, whatever the device they use to interact with.

“You can now browse the Web with your mobile while watching your favourite TV show, which can then be linked with your Facebook account or Twitter in real time.

“Overall, this also creates a sense of community via the social media and allows marketers to engage with their consumers more effectively.

“In terms of strategic value assessment, the HTC Omni case was also a good example, in which it could generate a US$20 million revenue in 12 months with a $2 million additional investment to shift from traditional to online marketing.

“Using the GPS feature, you can offer discounts of, say, 10 per cent, to potential customers walking by the store via their mobiles.

“Digital marketing budgets are growing rapidly at many organisations, as are loyalty programmes and the likes, which can be tied with the overall marketing campaigns.

“Given the advent of video streaming via the Net for the distribution of movies or the sport TV app (on mobile devices such as iPhones, iPads and Androids), we’re witnessing a shift from one-way communication (as in the traditional marketing platform) to a community-based platform.

“Then, there are instant analytic tools for marketers to get real-time feedback so that they can quikcly adjust or fine-tune the campaign. 

“For the new generations, Facebook marketing is another trend in which more and more local content will be generated around the world.

“For example, content creation from people in Thailand is becoming easier, and those contents can be exported to the rest of world instantly.

“In the media industry, the BBC has recently introduced a new browser that allows customers to integrate the pay TV account with that of HBO,” he says.