Posted by: Robin Houghton, director, Eggbox Marketing Ltd.
This week San Francisco hosts a Web 2.0 conference that the
BBC is describing as ‘Disneyland for web nerds’: 7,000 people getting excited about blogs, mashups, podcasting, social networking, widgets, wikis, tags and apps while tweeting away to their contacts.
It’s an event that will probably bypass the radar of many mainstream marketers, and yet according to a recent survey from Forrester the majority of North American and European firms see Web 2.0 as a priority this year.
So how does that make you feel? Excited? Alarmed? Underwhelmed? Whatever mindset we go in with, what’s for sure is that we need to find out about it. Now. If you don’t believe me, just think back ten years.
Marketers arrived late at the internet party. We saw it happening, we watched while the techies grabbed the drinks from our hands, we lost control. The result is that email communication with customers, website development and promotion, even online advertising is routinely left to IT departments or new media agencies. Marketers may own the strategic high ground but it only takes one IT person to suck air through teeth or one account exec to go gung-ho for widgets and suddenly the plans change. Surely we’ve learned the lesson that when technology calls the tune, marketing goes out the window.
And if you’re put off by the jargon, don’t be – new media tools are just that, tools that may or may not serve a commercial purpose. You decide.