I spoke today at 3XE Digital in Dublin on the biggest lies in the digital marketing world. Here is the transcript of my talk along with the deck at The Drum:
The biggest lies that digital marketers tell themselves
Thank you for the introduction. This is my first time in Ireland, so it’s great to be here and see the Emerald Isle. I only have 20 minutes here to go through just a small number of the falsehoods that a lot of you probably believe, so let’s dive right in.
Note: this talk is rated 12-A in the UK and Ireland and PG-13 in America. Parental guidance is suggested because there will be some strong language.
If the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he did not exist, then the greatest trick that the sellers of certain marketing software have pulled for the last decade was convincing marketers that advertising is dead.
For years, so-called experts proclaimed the death of advertising and so-called ‘outbound marketing’. In 2004, Jim Nail of Forrester Research said we’re seeing “the end of the era of mass marketing”. In 2009, Bob Garfield of Ad Age wrote that “the post-advertising age is underway”.
For years, we all saw countless articles and pundits saying that advertising is dead or proclaiming that it soon will be. And you know what they were? Completely and utterly wrong.