New pack of cards

In a world where we listen to ourselves and our friends, we seldom appreciate what a marketer tells us. We are inclined to trust information and comments from our known sources. Why? Is it that past marketers have let us down? Is it that the people we know understand our taste and hence deliver feedback accordingly? Is it that we relate to thoughts and actions of our friends and see ourselves follow them? Is it that we are vary of mis-targetted marketing shots aimed at us telling us what we don't want to hear? I believe its all of the above.

Reading the B-school case study on Facebook, I realized the importance of the hunter once being the prey. When Zuckerberg started the company, he was solving for problem that was his very own - he needed access to his close friends and wanted an online facebook that had updated real-time, latest information (not the hard copy that gets distributed at the start of the school year). He was his own customer.

Marketers need to not only think like buyers, but also act like them. Social media makes the buyer the marketer. In this chicken and egg cycle, we need to break through the silos and see the gray area. It's a painful but factual metamorphisis into a new era of managing business - buyer is the marketer. The faster we embrace and acknowledge this, the farther ahead one would get with respects to his competition. We have to learn to play the new pack of cards.