It wasn’t surprise to me to see this morning’s press release about CMOs not being up to speed on social; I know I’m not. A couple of weeks ago I went to the CMO Club in San Francisco, and was equally as impressed by the great displays of knowledge as complete ignorance. I feel like I fall somewhere in the knowledgeable category, but there is so much to learn and leverage that it’s hard to figure out how everything fits together.
Because I work at a traditional consumer products company that built its brand on print advertising, there’s a huge HUGE resistance to change. Our folks strongly believe that magazines drive the brand more than any other medium.
We just did a research study where we found that 68 percent of our customers use magazines to derive ideas and suggestions for purchase. The only source listed higher was, surprise, the Internet. But I have also found that the ads we were doing didn’t contribute measurably to the overall lead count. So I can presume a couple of things from this:
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We didn’t do a good job of measuring the effectiveness of our ads
Our ads weren’t that effective (although this is pretty unlikely, since we’re a very well known brand)
Print advertising is on its deathbed, and we need to wake up and smell the coffee
The upshot of all of this? I’ll still continue to advertise in major shelter books, but it’s got to be more fully integrated with the overall marketing plan. Every ad I do will link to a social presence, and our social presence will have equal weight as the print ads.
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