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Blackshaw To Marketers: 'Get Back to Boring'

  • Ad Age, Thursday, March 11, 2010 10:56 AM
Enough already with the sizzle, says Nielsen Online Digital Strategic Services' Pete Blackshaw, let's get back to the fundamentals. A klieg light snapped on in Blackshaws' cerebrum following a conversation with retired Procter & Gamble ad veteran (and mentor) Bob Wehling, who reminisced about times past such as early Ivory Soap ads inviting consumer feedback and Bill Cosby wanting to talk in an "authentic" voice in a Crest campaign.

"Maybe what's missing in our 'social' marketing transformation is the really boring and basic stuff," Blackshaw says. "Maybe dull drives digital. Maybe fundamentals face us forward. Maybe boring is breakthrough."

Not that these basics -- trust, customer relationship management, emotion, listening, patience and leadership -- are simplistic by any means. "Managing Facebook fans may look easy, but it's not," he writes. "Nor are marketing fundamentals."

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