Comments on: iMedia Brand Summit: Day 1

By: Jeff Hilimire

Jeff Hilimire — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 16:11:37 +0000

“Tomorrow is already here”, great line. And your Macbeth example is very insightful. Completely agree that marketers/agencies need to rethink about how they are viewing the consumer.

Why do I always get the feeling when we say things like this that we're holding the Jerry Maguire “mission statement” and the old-school CMO's and agency heads are clapping and giving us the thumbs up, while secretly whispering about how we're “outta here”? (this will probably be the subject of an upcoming blog I'm writing, now that I think about it).

Back to the question at hand, I still think there is a disconnect between marketers knowing they need to get into the space yet being too scared of the resources required to do so. Hiring freezes and layoffs have led to less staff doing more work and the idea of adding more to their plate for “an experiment” must be extremely daunting.

By: Jeff Hilimire

Jeff Hilimire — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 09:11:37 +0000

“Tomorrow is already here”, great line. And your Macbeth example is very insightful. Completely agree that marketers/agencies need to rethink about how they are viewing the consumer.

By: Brian England

Brian England — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 19:46:50 +0000

Hi Jeff – nice post. Wasn't Jeff great? Smart, smart guy.
I think there's a sense among the rank and file (like myself) that you could always use more help in your job…but waiting until your company is fully staffed could lead to disaster. If you think of the Mortin Moms example – one reason that got out of hand so quickly is they had zero social presence from which to defend themselves/apologize/speak from.
The expectations that are placed on brands in terms of accesibility, transparency and honesty would have been considered absurd even 5 years ago will be increasingly common as social makes more and more inroads in our society. Think when the web really got going years back…companies weren't sure they needed a website…now if a company doesn't have one I won't even visit their store.
So – to answer your question, companies must start working out a wholistic social strategy – now….tomorrow is already here. At the very least, companies can start listening to consumers in the space, understand what is being said and start engaging with folks on a very basic level. I have some more thoughts here: http://mightymighty.tumblr.com/post/120217876/m…