GSK’s challenges are common among large enterprises. There’s definitely an assembly-line culture that grew out of the last century’s business models. I also believe that many enterprises and marketing departments have an organizational form of Perfectionism which has no room in a real-time world.

Their planning/execution models are based on a paradigm that no longer exists, as you know.

The fact that:
# so many choices have to be made;
# conversations need to be quality and sincere;
# attention spans are short;
# messages are now real-time;

means that marketing functions (and I would argue that “everyone is in marketing”) must be able to QUICKLY identify and attempt to exploit opportunities which then MAY turn into a WOM/Viral inferno. I call this “dandelion marketing.”

And, since you have rapid feedback loops to tell you if a test work (and you can test new things very cheaply and the moments for exploitation are ephemeral), you need to be able to adjust rapidly and take risks.

GSK’s marketing function (and I don’t know them) is probably not designed to do that and is probably not a risk-tolerant culture.

There’s a lot of hype and faulty reasoning in the blogosphere about the power of social media for marketing. The fact is, it’s very easy for businesses to get lost in the Web if they aren’t fully aware and prepared to do what it takes to be remarkable.

You point out that the web is a mess and is vaporizing. You say marketers can’t be in all “places” at all times, so just relax.

So far so good.

If I can recast what you’re saying, you’re pointing out that the value of traditional “push” media diminishes as there is more and more content on the web. The marketers broadcast message is becoming diluted because the number of messages is growing while people’s capacity for attention is fixed.

That’s half the equation.

The other half of the equation is that “pull” technologies are becoming more prevalent and better.

I found your blog post because I subscribe to your RSS feed.

Other examples — search engines are getting better at indexing the entire web and providing personalized results through improved algorithms. Twitter lists allow you to subscribe to content….

So my observation to marketers is that “push” (broadcast) will become increasingly less productive, but “pull” technologies will allow people people to find you if your content matches what they’re interested in.

Bottom line for marketers: make yourself relevant and findable.

And I’m not really taking it to the logical extreme because I’m working with metaphors. And you haven’t really proven anything.

Yes, marketing is vaporizing, but that doesn’t mean that EVERYTHING will vaporize.

My proof? I never would have found your brilliant article if marketing had vaporized TOTALLY.