• by Karl Greenberg , Staff Writer, June 12, 2015

With apps, social platforms, data vendors and ad technology companies and networks proliferating like those broomsticks in "The Sorcerer's Apprentice," being a marketer today must require a person to take Ritalin. “What's new? What's cool? What are Millennials doing today? Today's social platform is dead, let's find the new one.”

My favorite ad on this topic is the one for Adobe Marketing Cloud. “Yo, man, my mom's on WooWoo.” That one. So, when I was a kid growing up in the Panhandle, I did some fishing. A few times someone on the next jetty was the beneficiary of a bluefish run. I’d see the silver, the ripples, see him or her pulling up fish after fish. I’d pack my tackle and take off to their jetty to get some of that. Of course by the time I’d get there the “that” I’d wanted some had shifted to the jetty I'd just left.

How do you repress the compulsion to go to the newest, coolest thing, throw 10% at it and see if it sticks? Ten percent adds up. It's a good thing I just write about marketing instead of doing marketing because I'd dime myself out of a job with scattershot spend. I always assume that the finance leaders bending the CEO's ear are constantly judging marketers on attribution, ROI, KPIs, and other acronyms. They are under pressure. Turnover for "performance" issues is maybe not as bad as coach turnover in the NFL or NCAA, but I've seen it enough, in the auto business especially. One bad season and you're screwed. Doesn't that create a mob culture of brands trying to get to WooWoo first to win the Millennials? 

I'm writing this in a coffee shop near my house. I just had a conversation here with a woman in her early 30s who is in the media business. She was talking about an acquaintance of hers in the music business who goes to all of the Coachella-type concerts. This friend, she said, was at Bonnaroo, or one of those, and discovered there was a serious paucity of, like, tents. So, being young and savvy, she did the entrepreneurial thing: She bought cheap tents by the dozen and sold them at a 100% markup, and made a ton of money. Not. What she did was to decide to create a tent/camping gear sharing app. I kid you not. The woman who was talking to me said, "Why aren't marketers focusing on older people with money, who actually buy things?" This from someone born in '85.      

Harley-Davidson's global CMO, Mark-Hans Richer, who has been at the helm there for an unreal eight years (geological time for marketers) and who has brought the age of the brand way down told me he's the beneficiary of the culture there, not in so many words. That's putting it lightly. Even the CFO is a rider, so it's actually one of the few brands where "passion" isn't a word that means "Take my job, please." It's a company that understands itself and its customers. Lucky Harley: they don't have to buy friends or word of mouth. The center holds, so there's no chaotic, fragmented running from one new thing to another to win younger people because, as he explained it, they don't change what the brand means based on the audience. And that makes the job really much easier. But that's Harley-Davidson, and who wouldn't want that job? The other great thing about that brand, as he pointed out, is that it's one where younger people actually want what dad rides. Harley's ads, especially the new ones show old and young riders.   

The other thing Mark-Hans said (that I hadn't thought about because a lot of conferences I've been to leave me overwhelmed by data vendors, apps, marketing tech companies, channels, startups and  geegaws): There's old media, but old media hasn't disappeared. "Young people still watch a lot of television. The only electronic media that has vanished is the telegram." I don't know if he's right, but my daughter's friends are now listening to records, and when they go to ComicCon they leave with bags full of books. For all I know the code they're learning is Morse.