Relationship Marketing

I'm really hoping this doesn't become the new "innovation" (a word I could not be more sick of) but Relationship Marketing is shaping up as the major dialogue of 2012. In other words:  businesses everywhere have discovered that all of their behavior, not just their official marketing, affects how people feel about them. It's safe to assume we creatives will be saturated in theories, projects and debates on how best to exploit this new paradigm, though it's only "new" in the sense that America was new to Columbus.

Bob Garfield and Dave Levy have written a great article on this called "The Dawn of the Relationship Era" that everyone should read. Really a lot of it is common sense, but I can already sense the impatience with advice such as this: Your essence is transmitted continually via your relationships with consumers, employees, suppliers, shareholders, neighbors and the Earth itself. Or: let's meditate on the new currency of commerce: trust. Okay, I've selected some of the more woo-woo nuggets from the article, but the essential message - that businesses have lost the hegemony of marketing control and must now operate within a more interactive, unpredictably "human" dynamic - is solid.

We're now in an era where our marketing imperatives have evolved beyond research charts and clever ads to courting customer love. We want to inspire good reviews, retweets, word of mouth that goes digital - and that's where it gets tricky. The old methods of publicizing philanthropic gestures, or creating a reassuring tagline, just don't work with today's sophisticated audience. In a climate of business transparency and jaded consumers, only one option works: authenticity.

I can already envision corporate committees formed to produce sincerity as a key deliverable. There will be revamped mission statements, "reaching out," all kinds of clumsy attempts at manufacturing human connections out of traditional marketing methods. Managing business image and courting public appeal is going to be a long learning curve in this new era. But before companies can sell their purpose and authenticity to their customers, they're first going to have to get honest with themselves. "Integrity" has long been a favorite word of corporate slogans but the era of relationship marketing may force it to become a reality.