Just as Martin Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses transformed Christianity, Google’s simple text box is transforming marketing — from top to bottom. Since the 1950s, great marketing theorists such as Theodore Levitt and Jerome McCarthy have developed frameworks for companies to create awareness of new needs to be met by novel products. These now-standard methods, such as the four P’s of marketing and the five M’s of advertising, are based on the assumption that the company controls its marketing message, communication channels and brand.
There is no doubt that enlightened consumers have begun to seize power from marketers, in the manner that Ms Belz has described, and rightfully so. Just for fun, it would be interesting to hear Ms Belz's take on how employees might similarly gain greater leverage in their relationships with the organizations they work for, and use that leverage to be compensated more fairly, and to have more say in decisions that affect them. We know that employees use social media to vent about the companies (and bosses) they work for, but they generally must remain anonymous in doing so. We know that management's credibility with employees continues to decline as CEO's enrich themselves but leave little on the table for the people who are left behind to do the work after the latest round of downsizing. This is not just a labor relations question, but a behavioral science question, and possibly a tech question. Where is the platform that will enable workers to launch their own "reformation" without fear of reprisal?
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The Googleist Reformation
Posted by: Andrea Belz March 16, 2011 09:33 AMJust as Martin Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses transformed Christianity, Google’s simple text box is transforming marketing — from top to bottom. Since the 1950s, great marketing theorists such as Theodore Levitt and Jerome McCarthy have developed frameworks for companies to create awareness of new needs to be met by novel products. These now-standard methods, such as the four P’s of marketing and the five M’s of advertising, are based on the assumption that the company controls its marketing message, communication channels and brand.