Ralph Crosby's
Lessons Learned In A Lifetime Of Marketing
About
Ralph's Book
Businesses often are started by entrepreneurs with an idea, a product or service, or an expertise. Many of them fail, not because the idea or product isn’t good, but because their attention is overwhelmingly directed internally – e.g., what goes into the product – when they should focus externally, always reminding themselves:
“It’s The Customer, Stupid!”
That’s the premise of Ralph Crosby’s new book, “It’s The Customer, Stupid! Lessons Learned in a Lifetime of Marketing.”
The “New” Integrated Marketing Communications
I’m not the only one who has said it, but I was pretty clear in my book, It’s the Customer, Stupid!, that “New media + Old Media = The Future of Marketing.”
More recently, John Wren, president/CEO of the Omnicom Group, predicted:
“Two years from now, don’t expect distinctions between traditional and digital…. I can’t think of a single major campaign that isn’t driving consumers to Facebook or the web.”
At my agency, Crosby Marketing, that has become a premise of our marketing approach, the integration of new media and traditional media to broaden the reach of all media, from one channel to another, from person to person.
At Crosby, we used to structure our agency in silos, even calling them “departments,” e.g., the creative department, the media department, the production department and the interactive department, the latter of which housed our web and digital specialists. Today, you’ll find these specialists integrated throughout the agency.
For example, when we look at a media campaign for a client, we might be assessing everything from billboards to TV and Facebook ads to social media marketing. An example of this is our work with the United States Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service where we created a public education campaign to combat the Emerald Ash Borer Beetle. The program was designed to educate the general public on the devastation the beetle causes to America’s forests and to rally outdoor enthusiasts “not to move firewood,” as moving firewood is the primary way of spreading the beetle.
Crosby’s connection planners purchased billboard placements, online display banner advertising and mobile advertising. A digital media buying specialist purchased social media advertising and worked with one of our public relations people on Facebook and Twitter postings. Integrated into this were the account and creative folks who developed and distributed TV and radio PSAs. They all worked together to develop the campaign website.
Did it work, this integration of traditional media with new media and the specialists to implement it? If the proof is in the proverbial pudding, we sure produced a lot of pudding. This campaign generated one billion media impressions; $4.2 million in donated earned media; 162,000 people visiting the website; and an increase of Facebook fans from less than 300 to almost 20,000.
As this campaign shows, the distinctions between traditional media and digital media are fast disappearing. The result is integrated marketing communications of a new kind — one that can produce exceptional results.
###
Thanks for the Information Ray Bahr MD
There is one Group that you are not penetrating…..and that is the Group that will have nothing to do with “Facebook” because of it’s perceived reputation of Facebook as “trouble”. How would you “break through” this hardened group? Ray Bahr MD
Dr. Bahr: We certainly can’t convince individuals who perceive Facebook as “trouble” to use it. However, that is why we use what we call an “integrated strategy” in our marketing programs, i.e., using multiple channels–online and offline–so if the customers of our client do not use one media, we’ll presumably reach them via another media in our mix.