Drugi jezik na kojem je dostupan ovaj članak: Bosnian
Have you ever heard of ‘nonlinear marketing’? If you haven’t yet, now is the right time to delve into it. Jamie Turner, an acclaimed international marketing expert, claims that it’s one of the trends that’s going to prevail in the marketing world. He describes it as “the process of creating demand and preference for your product or service by having the brand participate in the consumer’s life, and by having the consumer participate in the brand’s life”. He’s looking forward to coming to Slovenia, to the SEMPL conference, as traveling is one of his passions.
Media Marketing: To begin with, please share some facts about yourself. You were born in UK, but moved to USA. How did your career path develop and what did it take for you to become an internationally recognized marketing expert?
Jamie Turner: I was born to American parents in a small suburb outside of London called Walton-on-Thames. 6 months after we moved back to the United States, John Lennon with the Beatles moved in to the neighbourhood next to ours, so we missed being his neighbour by just 6 months.
I had the opportunity to go back to the U.K. for a term of study at an Oxford University exchange program, which was wonderful. That visit gave me the love of travel, which is why I’m so lucky to travel the globe today doing speeches in countries around the world. Speaking of which, I can’t wait to visit Slovenia – everyone I’ve spoken to says it’s an amazing country with very friendly people.
Media Marketing: You helped many global brands, such as Coca-Cola, tackle complex marketing problems. Can you name some of these problems that you helped them with?
Jamie Turner: I did some really interesting work for Coca-Cola. One of their challenges was that their truck drivers would quit after only a year or so on the job. Our research showed that the truck drivers were unprepared for how difficult the job would be. The result was that Coca-Cola had high turnover, which was a drain on their resources.
Our analysis indicated that if we revised the messaging, we might be able to lower the number of drivers who quit. Previously, their marketing campaigns to recruit drivers were all about how wonderful it was to be a driver for Coca-Cola. We changed that so that the message said that being a driver for Coca-Cola was a tough, demanding job, but at the end of the day, you’re working for one of the world’s great brands.
By being fully transparent about the realities of the job, people who weren’t up for the challenge didn’t apply. As a result, we were able to recruit people who fully understood the pluses and minuses heading into the job, which reduced employee turnover and saved Coca-Cola a lot of money in training costs.
Media Marketing: Five years ago, you published the book Go Mobile. What were the biggest changes in the mobile marketing that you could not predict when you were writing the book?
Jamie Turner: I never expected Facebook to adjust to the mobile marketplace so quickly. Five years ago, they were a huge, slow moving organization that was entirely focused on desktop. But Mark Zuckerberg was able to organize his troops, create a new vision, and shift their focus to mobile very quickly. The fact that he was able to turn that battleship around so quickly is, quite frankly, amazing. I never would have predicted that.
Media Marketing: How did the location-based services evolve? A few years ago, we talked a lot about beacons but now it seems that they are not in the centre of (marketing) attention anymore…
Jamie Turner: It’s true – things change in mobile so quickly, it’s hard to keep up. Beacons were a big thing, but never caught on. In the end, it’s less about the technology – for example, beacons, GPS, cell tower triangulation. Instead, it’s about the fact that people have their phones with them at all times. That’s what I tell businesses to focus on – the end result, not the technology that got the end result.
Media Marketing: Ad blockers, ad fraud, fake news… These are some of the issues that the digital advertising ecosystem is currently dealing with. What is your opinion about them – can digital advertising industry jointly solve these problems in the near future? How far-reaching is their effect actually?
Jamie Turner: These are all very important issues and they’re issues that we’re dealing with on a daily basis. Fake news is a huge problem from a societal point-of-view since it can impact entire regions of the world. Ad fraud and ad blockers are less serious, but can be a real hindrance for any business trying to use digital advertising to grow their sales and revenues. In the end, they are all big problems, but I’m confident each of the problems will be confronted and minimized over the next several years.
Media Marketing: Marketing and IT should work hand in hand, many experts claim. In your opinion, does this mean that marketing directors/managers should learn more about IT? What kind of IT/computer knowledge is useful for them?
Jamie Turner: It’s very important for marketing executives to learn about IT, but at a certain point, you have to leave the complex IT work to the IT executives. Either way, your question points to a larger issue, which is how IT and marketing now go hand in hand. If you don’t have them working together, then your competitors will get a jump on you and will acquire more customers than you do. And that would be a bad thing. J
Media Marketing: Advertisers and (online) publishers put a lot of hope in native advertising. In one of your blogs, you claim that good native advertising reduces the role of the advertiser. How can then a consumer/reader establish a connection between the (sponsored) article and the advertiser/brand?
Jamie Turner: I’m a big fan of native advertising because I think it’s a more nuanced and genuine approach to building a bridge between brands and their prospects. Even though there are pluses and minuses to native advertising, I think overall it’s a new and interesting way to connect with prospects and convert them to customers. In the long run, we’ll be seeing more and more of it as time goes on.
Media Marketing: With the expansion of social networks and their influence, the influencer marketing emerged as well. What kind of future do you predict for marketing activities that involve influencers? How credible is influencer marketing in the eyes of consumers?
Jamie Turner: Brands are always trying to find new ways to reach consumers. Influencer marketing is one of the newer ways to do that but it has yet to be proven as a successful approach. That said, as brands figure out the best ways to use influencer marketing, the return on investment will improve and more and more brands will view it as a viable option. The bottom line – influencer marketing will evolve and as it does, brands will figure out how to improve the return on investment.
Media Marketing: In your view, which trends in marketing will prevail in the next few years?
Jamie Turner: I’ve written about something called nonlinear marketing, which is a way for brands to bypass traditional channels and to use new channels to connect with prospects. Nonlinear marketing is one of the trends that will prevail over the next few years because it forms a longer lasting, deeper relationship with the customer.
Media Marketing: In November, you are coming to the SEMPL conference in Portorož, Slovenia. What will be your key message to the audience?
Jamie Turner: Thanks to the internet, the world is getting smaller every day. I have clients in Poland, Israel, Slovenia and elsewhere who are doing amazing things in marketing and technology. Best of all, businesses in the U.S. are just as likely to work with companies in Poland, Israel, and Slovenia as they are to work with companies in Boston, New York, or San Francisco. We really have reached an age of globalism and that’s very good news indeed.
