How Marketing Will Save Itself

This morning’s ad:tech keynote was by Hunter Hastings, of EMM Group.

Hunter is very professor-like, and a bit too preachy. The two points of his presentation are compelling:

• Engagement as the new measure of success

• Metric-driven processes oriented marketing

Left unanswered, though, is how affordable and accurate engagement metrics might be collected. His call for an industry standard of measuring “engagement points” rings hollow without suggestions for counting them across contact points.

Also, his prediction that business is set to give the demand chain the same scrutiny previously shone on the supply chain is fair. I agree that the marketing industry is destined for measured evaluation (witness General Mills) and will need to adapt. But this is likely to take a very, very long time, and Hunter failed to add any sense of urgency to his prophecy of doom and gloom for the advertising industry. And for the marketers in the audience that he’s advising to shift to agile process orientation rather than hierarchical management, he neglected to add any persuasion.

Strong points, but I got a sense the audience was underwhelmed. Not because they didn’t get the message, but because they hadn’t been convinced there was value or immediacy.

(Susan Bratton, who introduced, though, has a tremendous stage presence. I suspect she could just stand up and proclaim that free printed T-shirts were the future of marketing and the crowd would have run off to order some immediately.)