Marketing has lost control

We are in a society of ideologies, of theories - everyone claims to know how to do it, everyone has the answer. It's magical.??

Companies spend a lot of money on useless marketing actions - decision makers choose actions for the WOW effect instead of concrete results. We do marketing actions more often for ourselves than for our company. We let ourselves be guided by trends, by technologies, forgetting that they are only tools, nothing else.??

Every day, we analyze the likes, the metrics, the number of views without asking ourselves if people wanted to look or if they had the choice to look at what we've pushed in front of their eyes.?We've become blinded by looking at our Excel spreadsheets - we can't see anymore.?

We have also become deaf. Web2.0 has given voice to the real market, the consumers, but nothing changes. We only hear what we want to hear.?

I have been active in the field of communication and marketing for 20 years. I've turned down a lot of business opportunities because I can't do what a client wants if I know it's not going to do anything for their business.?I'm probably stupid.?

I feel that 95% of companies are totally overwhelmed by communication, they don't know what to do. But above all, they don't see what is coming, very soon.?The biggest research firms have already released dozens of reports (the last one in March 2022) showing that in a few years, 90% of internet searches will be done by voice. What are the consequences of this change??

Companies without a positive digital reputation (and it's not Google that decides, it's the users/consumers) will be ignored in the results.?So the big question is: how can I have a good digital reputation? The answer is so logical that I'm ashamed to write it: by bringing value to people in your communication.?

It has never been easier to reach the segments we want - and never more complicated to engage them.?If we want the next generation to be interested in us, we have to get them interested!?

People keep saying that everything is changing, that it's not the same today. I don't agree.

Technology, social networks have taken us back to the basics - these tools have taken us back to the days of word of mouth before the internet with these basics:? If you have a good product/service, respect people/consumers and care, then your business will be fine.

Companies think, with the advent of new tools, that we need to change the fundamentals, that with a clever algorithm, we don't need to spend as much time on the basics - this is the biggest mistake I've seen in the last 20 years.?

I hear so many Marketing Directors or Experts (...) bragging about the number of views their campaign generated. That they knew that by putting an ad on Youtube it would "work".? Hearing this makes me sick! Putting an intrusive ad on a platform where people (mainly) enjoy, stopping them in the middle of their interest to send them a message (which is often totally different from the video in question) is an action that goes against the primary objective of marketing: to make people like a brand.?Personally, when I am interrupted and forced to watch a commercial, the effect is the opposite - I never want to hear about that brand again.?

Who are my current consumers??Who are my future consumers? Where are they? What do they want to hear? What are they interested in? What do they no longer want to see? How do they perceive my industry? Why do they want to do this? How can I change this perception? How can I talk to them? How do I listen to them??

These are the thoughts that nobody have anymore. This is the fundamental mistake I see.?Before you can do/sell what you do - you MUST understand your market and that doesn't stop at understanding your product/competitors/technology - it's "before that" understanding people and to understand them, you have to be interested. To be able to afford to care, you have to stop thinking you know, stop being arrogant, stop thinking you've been a market player long enough to know.??

People are at the heart of everything on this planet. Take an interest in them.?

Nicolas Nervi, CEO, Smart-Corner.com