Digital Marketing, Do we need it? Yes. We do.

While perusing the news this week to decide what to blog on, I came across an interesting article title, “Why CMO Clive Sirkin Says We Don't Need Digital Marketing.”  I had to click on it for multiple reasons, first – the very core of our class is learning digital marketing, therefore I needed to learn why a prominent Fortune 500 CMO was speaking out against its necessity , second – the article was written on Forbes, a news site discussed last week in class as possibly diluting its own brand value because of its own digital marketing tactics (numerous ads). 

As soon as I clicked on the article, I was confronted with a video banner ad for an Adobe product I already own, and have never searched for. Check mate for the points made in class for dilution of brand. In the article, Clive Sirkin, CMO of Kimberly-Clark Corporation the “Essentials for a better life” Company (Cottonelle, Kleenex) discusses how “we need to think about how what we do looks to the consumer. Start with the right idea, put it on the table, and nurture it,” versus thinking of different forms of marketing – digital, content, shopper, and event.

While I agree with him, I think all he is doing is dissecting what is actually the bigger beast as a whole – overall marketing. Digital marketing is just a subset of marketing, which is essentially knowing the customer, and how to approach him/ her, and speak with them. In the age of technology, all digital marketing is knowing the customer even more so that when ideas do arise you know how to reach the targeted customer. It is also knowing that there are potential customers who react positively towards different forms of marketing and reaching them using the medium of technology. He thinks that if “we pull the consumer in different directions, we create complexity.” I think that if the company has consistent messaging across all platforms regardless of if it is considered “digital,” “event,” or “shopper,” marketing the company has not lost sight of the customer.  Focusing in on the word “digital” is not the answer. While it creates a good tagline or subject of an article, the fact remains that it is all about knowing the consumer, and digital and technology are giving marketers more insight than ever before into their consumers.