An interesting debate on the presumable death of marketing has been taking place over at the Customer Management Zone (previously CRM-forum.com) at Insightexec.com for the past few months. It all ended (or has it?) in an exciting climax in London. Approximately 100 people gathered there to debate on the future of marketing.

You can find the full introductory report by Richard Forsyth at the Zone.

Richard believes that it is the responsibility of marketers to take back strategic activities under the control of marketing, but at the same time motivate the rest of the corporation to share our responsibility.

It is also interesting to note that 48% of the attendees agreed with the proposition that marketing does not work anymore, while the remaining 52% disagreed. As Richard Forsyth notes in his article "it is a little concerning that an audience of (presumably) marketing professionals is so split on the effectiveness of what they do."

What does all this, and other notes you can read about in Richard's article, mean for the future of marketing?

Only the future will tell, but personally I believe that marketing has the following challenges (and many others of course, these are just a few that first come to my mind) to meet:

1. Balancing push and pull approaches, especially considering the slow transition to the total permission marketing model.

Why total? First, consumers want the power. And second, and more threatening, the legislation that seems to be coming in to place will probably all but limit unwanted communication with the prospect, except through mass media of delivery, such as the TV ... which is loosing effectiveness.

2. Leveraging new technologies (such as mobile and interactive TV) to better meet the requirements of our prospects and customers and delivering our messages more effectively ... and even more importantly, in order to increase communication and dialog with the target audiences.

There's another point to be mentioned about the future of television as well. Some are arguing that TiVo might mean the death of TV advertising, while others are arguing that people are much to lazy to learn to use it and that TiVo adoption still has a long way to go.

From what I gather TiVo perhaps shouldn't be the first of advertisers' worries, since technologies that will allow Video-on-demand are already available and ready to come in to place. If this means that TV ads won't be included in the program is yet to be seen.

3. Winning its place in the corporate organizational structure and at the same time enlisting the assistance of the entire organization to help marketing meet the needs of the organization and target audiences.

4. Adjusting itself to individual prospects (personalization and communication), while at the same time keeping in tact with the users' requests for anonymity and privacy. Might be difficult, eh?

5. Moving from the strictly promotional approach to the more educational one, namely, using education to generate leads, manage relationships and drive sales. People do not want to be sold to, but they still want quality information ...

Another interesting issue relevant to the future of marketing: a new market study finds that TV advertising has a low impact on consumers' car buying decisions, while the Internet is quickly gaining ground. Read the entire article ...