“Priya is a proponent of user centered design and believes that it will play a key role in the future of marketing. Agencies are limited by their briefs to some degree, in what they receive as instruction from the client, and the client’s own vision of what they think the future of marketing is going to be. Agencies need to be able to separate themselves from this to help stretch the true boundaries of future marketing.”

http://digitalmarketing.typepad.com/adventures/2008/03/chinwag-live-to.html

I actually think the biggest challenge today is being in the right place at the right time, and knowing what positive course of action to take when these conversations / interaction are taking place with your product / brand / company.

Examples of brands not getting this and acting foolishly are numerous. My personal fav is:

http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/news/2005/08/68492

The question for the future, for me, is to what extent this consumer-focus clashes with “giving the clients what they want” as articulated by Grey and A&E.

The last marketing aeon seemed to come from brave, creative people giving clients what they ‘need’ rather than what they want. (There is the famous story of George Lois threatening to leap from a Madison Avenue window if his ad was not bought, for instance.) The client simply wanted to improve their bottom line. The agencies had to fight to show them how to do it. The agencies knew better. They were expert. And they knew it.

Is such an aeon upon us today?

There will be some business who are genuinely motivated by giving to their consumers – the ‘pull’ marketeers whose messages we seek willingly. This lot will be a pleasure to work with.

But there will, inevitably, be other businesses who are motivated purely by making more money and ‘pushing’ to meet their targets. For whom the customer is but a cash cow to be milked and milked and milked again (or should that read ‘mailed’).

Their marketing deparments are calibrated to fit the ancien régime.

I would suggest it is the agencies with the biggest balls that will enjoy the most success here. The ones who represent the consumer in meetings. People who will say “your customers do not want this….it’s YOU who wants this…this is a bad idea. No.“.

I imagine it will take salespeople…risk takers… mavericks. The next generation of Bernnbachs, Saatchis and Wundermans.

I don’t think it’s too cynical to suspect what a lot of clients ‘want’ is the status quo.

Sounds like it’s going to be fun.

Stomach ulcer anyone?