Caution: Two Way Dialogue Ahead

Last week, Rob Martin of MM2spoke to our class about integrated marketing. I just want to start off by saying how much I enjoyed his visit. Mr. Martin was very direct and frank about his message. He didn’t beat around the bush to say what he wanted to. Secondly, his PowerPoint was visually enticing and kept me engaged the entire time. He backed up his argument with lots of research and statistics, which was a plus because some of these statistics blew me away.

Amongst other things, I took away three key points from Martin’s lecture:
1) Marketing is a multi-channel, multi-platform and deeply social phenomenon. 
2) Communication is now a two way street.
3) The 4 P’s of marketing/advertising have evolved with our growing technology.


I feel like the first two points can be grouped together and conclude that the nature of the business is now cyclical rather than horizontal, something that even Ken Fairchild pointed out. The old way of doing things was just advertising and getting your message across via print, radio and television. Your product’s sales were basically the only type of feedback you got. However, now that consumers have a voice – a strong one, that too – the system has completely changed.

Marketers today don’t have any excuse if they aren’t listening to what their consumers are saying. From social media channels to blogs and review boards, stakeholders are speaking anywhere and everywhere they can. It is up to the marketers to find and use this data in order to enhance their brand.

The third point complements this whole cycle as well. Before, the 4 P’s of the marketing mix  were product, place, promotion and price – all of which were controllable by the marketers in the one-way method. However, as Martin pointed out, those days are gone. The new 4 P’s, listed below, reflect the recent connected, two-way nature of the system:


1) Portal/platform
2) Permission
3) Participation
4) Personalization

As Martin said, we are living in the time of a “marketing mashup, where everything is multi-layered with lots of options.” The growth of technology is exponentially increasing these layers and options on a day-to-day basis. Now, how these layers and options are used at their full potential is up to us…