No Erasers.

Five New Rules For Marketing

// April 13th, 2009 // Marketing

I have a bit of a penchant for lists, manifestos & declarations, so these Five New Rules captured my imagination.

The CMO of Unilever, Simon Clift recently warned that marketers who do not recognize that Brands are part of (and wholly subject to) the new social media landscape — and adapt their marketing — are in grave peril. In his coverage of Mr Clifts speech to Ad Age’s Digital Conference on the new state of Marketing, Jack Neff included his (excellent) preliminary draft for Ad Age’s “New Rules.”

New Rules for Marketers

1. Listening to consumers is more important than talking at them.
Let your customers know you hear them – they’re not morons, they’re the ones defining your brand.

2. You can’t hide the corporation behind the brand anymore — or even fully separate the two.
Welcome to radical transparency, where bad corporate behavior will damage your brands, and vice versa.

3. PR is a primary concern for every CMO and brand manager.
If “marketing” and “PR” are not the same department, tear down the wall.

4. Cause marketing isn’t about philanthropy, it’s about “enlightened self-interest”
Don’t be ashamed of your profit motive, because great branding and doing good are increasingly one and the same.

5. Social media is not a strategy. You need to understand it, and you’ll need to deploy it as a tactic.
But remember that the social graph just makes it even more important that you have a good product.