Thoughts on Marketing | Culture Shift

Every day in my marketing world I’m living in a culture shift.

I have to say, I am very fortunate to be part of AD. We’re wired collaborative, we’re wired connected and we’re wired future. (If I had to work with a group that was in an old “command and control” model, I’d have slit my wrists long ago.)

I’m used to thinking differently. I can pursue people over projects and relationships over spreadsheets. I’m allowed to experiment simply by sharing the strategic thinking behind it. Here’s the thing. It has been wildly successful.

A couple of weeks ago, Seth Godin posted this: “If it gets to the RFP stage, you lost. Great business to business marketers (and profitable ones) make the sale long before that happens. The RFP is an organizational punt, it's a way of saying, "it's all a commodity, we can't decide, cheap guy wins." The cheap guy, of course, never wins.

The thing is most people in our industry chase leads over building pipelines. And every once in awhile when I’m confronted with that fact, it seems anachronistic.

Today, I responded to a nuts and bolts RFP and I received a call from a very nice marketing rep who shared information on a possible lead in Nebraska. This stood in stark contrast to our efforts earlier in the week providing a highly creative, collaborative, visual deliverable to help a strategic partner win a project in Dubai.

It’s a weird thing to surf a culture shift. Luckily I’m finding myself more often on the future side than in the past.