Posted by Jyotika Malhotra, Marketing & Communications Consultant & AIMS Blog Correspondent
As part of our ongoing look at 2007 Professional Resolutions, I spoke with Michael Seaton, Director of Digital Marketing at Scotiabank, an AIMS Sponsor and author of TheClientSide blog.
Jyotika Malhotra: I wanted to know what key marketers and communicators have on the agenda for next year – things that you’d like to do, things that you’d like to try, professional resolutions that you have, so to speak.
Michael Seaton: Off the top of my head, a couple of professional resolutions are that I’d like to let go a little bit more and not worry about too many details and let the capable people that I work with do more, because they are extremely talented folks.
The second is not really a resolution, but continuity – to continue to improve on our digital efforts and integrate them in all of our marketing and to look for newer, broader opportunities to really showcase our brand.
JM: Is there anything that you’d like to do better?
MS: Another resolution for 2007 is to increase the amount or participation of more traditional marketers into the newer areas of social media and digital marketing - to reach out to folks who may not know the power or importance of what’s coming down the pipe. What we can do better is to spell it out in a broader context. The folks who have been doing it in 2006, myself and Mitch [Joel at Twist Image] and Kathryn [Lagden] and yourself – we don’t want to sound like we are talking to ourselves. We need for others to really become part of the bigger picture so it’s not an 'us' vs. 'them'. We need to include more people in the 'us', to include more people in being part of the change as opposed to talking about them being resistant to it.
JM: How do you think we can do that?
MS: I think we can start to look at not being critical of efforts but look for the opportunities where things could have been done better and point them out. [We should not] approach new media like YouTube or video or blogs or podcasts as silos, as islands unto themselves but as part of the bigger mix. [We should] start really demonstrating how they fit in to the mix. That’s where I think there’s been a divide – there are a lot of people preaching about what to do and there have not been a whole lot of people actually doing it. More marketers need to take a chance and demonstrate – the rule book has not been written yet.
Scotiabank has always been open about sharing their marketing success stories – myself included as well as others. As more people become more open and honest and take on almost a CaseCamp mentality with the stuff that they’ve worked on, both right and wrong, then we can’t help but get better just by having that information, that connectivity. The more people that enter into the conversation from a marketing perspective, the better off we are. It’s a snowball effect, a collective wisdom thing – all of us together are better and smarter than any one of us in isolation.
Want to join the conversation and share in the collective wisdom? Share your thoughts for 2007 with AIMS readers.
Want to hear more from Michael Seaton? He’ll be speaking at the next AIMS Event on January 25th: Should Your Company Be Podcasting?
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