FreshNetworks Blog

Last year, a famous thinker in marketing theory was speaking in London and a group of us from FreshNetworks went along to listen to what was said. The speaker had some insightful things to say, the theories presented are useful, but for us and others there who work in social media marketing there was something that seemed just not to be true. The theory presented seemed not to have taken into account the changes we have seen in the world, the way people can share and exchange ideas and information thanks to online communities and social networks, the changing role of brand and consumer. Maybe, we said to each other as we left the session, there is a need to change what we mean and talk abotu when we talk about marketing. Maybe some of the old theories need to be updated and maybe there are some new theories to add in there.

That’s why this week’s Required Reading is a presentation from Alain Thys, a fellow blogger at Futurelab, given at F-Word in Helsinki. He looks at exactly this issue – how marketing can and should change.

The world has changed, but marketing is still applying the principles I learned in business school. This needs to change and this presentation is an “open source” call to help achieve this change.

He presents his thoughts as a starting  point to answering the question of what should change and how and wants to provoke a discussion and debate. Seeing and reading this presentation is the first stage to doing this.

Some more reading

• Ford’s Smart Social Media Marketing Approach (viralblog.com)
• Obama’s Extreme Social Media Marketing Skills (viralblog.com)
• Social Media Marketing Industry Report (incsub.org)