Commentary

Masters To Marketers: It's Time To Forge Ahead

The much-anticipated "Masters of Marketing" conference in Phoenix is over. Those masters and the 1,200 in attendance are back at their desks this morning hard at work (reading this), many from the East Coast victims of jet lag.

It seemed to me that this year may be the one when marketers across industries come to accept the inevitable, the importance of digitality, and will no longer put up a fight. While masters spoke of not abandoning traditional media, they also spoke, in turn, of putting more and more of their marketing budgets into online media as well as other, new kinds of media.

The rock star appearance of Al Gore seemed to drive that nail home. I couldn't help but wonder if the people I was speaking to had voted for him in 2000. I'm guessing that many of them, fiscally conservative by nature, did not. But there they were, wondering brightly if he might not run for president. Right. Why would a god run for that office?

Gore came to sell Current TV, one of his many projects, to an audience desperate for answers. Several of those I spoke to said they'd never understood what Current TV was all about. They seemed keenly interested in a program that does the opposite of what standard procedure has been, the model of taking TV and spitting it out on the Internet, as Gore put it, and reversed it. Gore gave a persuasive sales spiel.

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This may be the beginning of real change in our community, the year when the tide turned and we bid adieu to old ways of doing things. Much as journalists finally stowed their typewriters, marketers may have to put away more and more TV commercials as they learn to connect more strategically and effectively with consumers where they are -- on third screens everywhere.

What do you think? We'd love to know. You can read all the blog entries we made during the three-day conference at http://blogs.mediapost.com/raw/ .

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