We’ve compiled the first round of results from our ongoing online research into the development and future of connected marketing (CM).

In late 2005, we made 10 predictions about the future of CM in our book Connected Marketing: The Viral, Buzz and Word of Mouth Revolution. We’ve been asking CM industry luminaries to help us review and update those predictions for 2007.

Here are the topline results to date about Prediction 1 which stated: Connected marketing will become more strategic, with the focus shifting from promotion (creating remarkable campaigns) to innovation (creating remarkable products).

There’s no doubt that Prediction 1 is happening, particularly in the US. Certainly, P&G’s Connect + Develop programme and Reckitt Benckiser’s RB-Idealink Innovation Centre are examples of the kind of Open Innovation we were predicting, and Dell’s Ideastorm is a great example of how customers can suggest, feedback and vote on new product design/development.

But the shift to creating more remarkable products and services is happening more slowly than we thought, and where it is happening, it is rarely being done remarkably whether tactical or strategic. This is possibly as a result of the social media ‘revolution’, which has confused advertisers and their marketing agencies into thinking more about the tactics of how, what and where, rather than thinking first about the strategy of why, with whom and when.

The prediction also inadvertently polarises promotion and innovation, rather than seeing them as two sides of the same coin - or simply different aspects of the overall customer experience. This is important, because if the promise of your remarkable promotion (fluff) is not aligned with the experience of your remarkable offering (stuff) then you run the risk of building a base of disappointed customers, which, as Dr Doug Grisaffe, Assistant Professor of Marketing at the University of Texas points out, is not a prescription for success in today’s highly competitive and increasingly globalized markets.

Submit your own thoughts about Prediction 1 and the other predictions here.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 18th, 2007 at 6:22 am and is filed under news. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.