Ciceron Blog Archives

Speed Is The New King

The reason I'm declaring that the old king is dead is that for most marketing organizations, by the time content has gone through its corporate gauntlet of approvals and crosschecks, it's more often out of date or lacks a personality and is therefore no longer effective in communicating with people in ways web content should. The wheels of commerce move at a pace that rivals those gigantic gunners in the Empire Strikes Back, leaving them vulnerable to attack from far smaller yet potent killers. Bloggers, consumer review sites, and the aggregation of nimble 2.0 entities far exceed the effectiveness of monolithic, controlled marketing campaigns.

And there, good readers, was my first ever Star Wars analogy.

So speed is more important than content. Speed enables marketing organizations to adopt new media channels as they emerge -- and frankly, do away with them as they fall out of favor. To me, it's OK to have had a MySpace page three years ago, only to fall more in love with Facebook last year and today. Why? Because that's what consumers have done. You simply can't wait for the dust to settle on any one platform because the dust never does.

Speed requires trust, and that may be the greatest limitation that afflicts most marketing organizations. Companies often don't trust internal constituents, and, while it may seem outrageous, I think it's fair to say that many companies don't trust their own customers.

It's time to take a good long look in the mirror before you talk about incorporating new media channels into your marketing plan. Are you fast enough? Do you trust each other? Do you trust yourself to succeed?

If you answered "no" to any of these questions, then you have a fantastic challenge: evolve. Marketing has moved, and you need speed to succeed.