The consumer now receives messages from all directions, for example, social media, phone and e-mail, all of which are fighting for attention. In turn, this has implications on how consumers view brands and what is important to them in terms of the information being received.  Marketing Week have recently released an interesting article that delves into the current state of marketing, what medias are being utilized, and to what degree they currently impact on the consumer. Looking at the brain and how it processes information the report emphasizes one method of effective marketing and that is neuromarketing…

Microsoft has looked at how consumers engage with different media such as TV, PC and mobile devices. TV was likened to an old, reliable and entertaining friend, the PC like an older sibling and the mobile device a new lover.  Given that Microsoft conducted the study and is promoting neuromarketing as a way to engage with the consumer on a personal level and create a tool that enables interaction between seller and buyer on their hand held device, this is not entirely surprising.

BT’s Millard states: “Companies are using social media as broadcast media, but it’s actually about engagement. The challenge is that if a customer wants to talk to you, you have to find the person with the right skills to engage back, and that might exist somewhere beyond the marketing department. So it’s important to start thinking about how you break the boundaries between back office and front office, marketing and PR.

This statement is an idyllic situation for the marketer and one that at some point they will hopefully achieve, however in reality there are so many hurdles to overcome before getting to this point, perhaps this is more of a one off campaign as opposed to the culture in the long term strategy of a particular brand.  As Millard rightly states there is merit to investing in social media as a form of engagement and relating to the consumer in a social environment, however marketers need to ask themselves to what extent they push this and should they be selective in the content that they are posting through this media channel?  – Targeting is the fundamental point here, the consumer will listen when messages are relevant and interesting, target the right people and you can’t go wrong really!

If resources were on tap what would you as the marketer do…?  An interesting viewpoint from Martin Lindstrom, neuromarketing expert to finish on “The role of the marketer will be obsolete really soon. I predict that it will not be about marketers running online communication, instead it will be in the hands of psychologists and data miners.” –Food for thought perhaps…?