• by Laurie Petersen , October 14, 2007

On the flip side of all this is marketers who are wrestling with the day-in and day-out challenges of managing the multiple agencies and competencies needed to pull off marketing that uses conversation rather than one-way messaging as advocacy trumps awareness.

Questions remain as to how to organize a budget when decisions are made with the consumer at the center. Perhaps summing things up best was Rebecca Saeger, executive VP and CMO for The Charles Schwab Corp., who is putting more than 20% of her marketing dollars online and for some targets it's 50% of budget.

As all the giants scramble to build the best platform to support the new digital ad world, Saeger asks for simplicity that's on strategy: "I hope there become really good ways to execute what we need to execute."

Saeger also wants a better solution for managing the myriad capabilities needed to pull together marketing as media becomes increasingly fragmented requiring more and more specialists -- both internal and external.

"Somehow we've got to get a handle on this because frankly, that's the thing that's going to drive me to drink."