Advertising's Walking Dead, Or: Toward a New Marketing Stack

The big new thing often starts out being dismissed as a toy. Facebook, Snapchat, virtual reality, bots, emoji, messaging  what marketer took them seriously at the beginning? What marketer dares to ignore them now? Digital life has already turned on that imperceptible pivot where the future becomes the present and consumers take control. Somewhere back in time, any marketer could have seized the moment, but many rode past it on a wagon train of legacy models and old thinking. As a result, media channels today are clogged with advertising’s walking dead -- static banners, 30-second spots that bury the lede, you know the ones -- that consumers either ignore or kill. Stop the echo chamber of brand soliloquies. Consumers don’t care how many business units your company has, or the fact that you chose to use different agencies for media, creative and product. They care about great experiences. Great marketing is impossible without this understanding. The marketing stack is predicated on user-centric modes of communication and commerce, and it looks something like this: