Digital Marketing IS Traditional Marketing
Brad Jakeman, PepsiCo's President of Global Beverage Group, shocked the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) Masters of Marketing conference when he publicly spoke out against the traditional agency model.
In that same speech, he called digital marketing "the most ridiculous term I've ever heard," explaining that "there is no such thing as digital marketing. There is marketing – most of which happens to be digital."
In recent memory, digital marketing was regarded as the antithesis to traditional marketing. It had its own separate budget, team, and management, and had little cross-over with traditional TV, radio, and print ads.
Marketing has changed so drastically in the last decade, and with the consumer landscape shifting from television as a first screen to television as a third, or even fourth screen (after mobile phones, tablets, and laptops), marketers have had no choice but to follow suit.
"As more people adopt new technology, marketers need to implement an omnichannel strategy to orchestrate seamless interactions from device to device, from experience to experience," said Rich Kahn, Founder and CEO of marketing agency eZanga. "This ensures a cohesive marketing plan that follows users between the ‘real’ and the digital worlds."
The term "digital marketing" is ubiquitous, and no longer considered a specialty within a larger marketing organization.
In an interview with Inc. Magazine, Belkin CMO, Kieran Hannon said: "My new year's resolution for 2016 is to ban the notion of 'digital' and 'traditional' being separate elements. They're not; it's all Marketing (with a capital M). Teams must be proficient in developing strategies and tactics along with the prioritization of such programs."
Someone recently shared with us a conversation they had with their very old-fashioned CMO, in which he mentioned that he saw no purpose in content marketing.
Even now, as we blaze through The Information Age and The Digital Revolution, some companies are still slow to acknowledge digital marketing as "mainstream," and those that do, are putting themselves at a huge disadvantage.