Before last week’s Direct Marketing Days New York conference, I would have sworn that “convergence” was a dead-and-gone term. But when one breakout session after another spent valuable time and oxygen trying to define it, I realized that, like a villain attempting to kill James Bond, the trick is not to talk about it before putting a bullet into it.
For the initiated, convergence is the most insidious concept to dribble out of a consultant’s mouth in some time, primarily because it takes a host of other buzzwords and ties them up in a large, lumpy package. A consultant who has been handed a high enough retainer might define convergence as follows: “Convergence occurs when the de-siloization of internal corporate core competencies allows brand- and direct-marketing paradigms to be integrated into a disintermediated multi-channel marketing structure, allowing the optimization of operating efficiencies as well as desired actions on the part of the target audience all with an eye toward maximizing return on investment.”
Basically, convergence integrates nearly every aspect of a firm’s operations short of the custodial staff. And the only reason they weren’t thrown into the mix is that, unlike statisticians, database programmers and creative directors, janitors have a union and threatened to strike.
What is especially galling is that the reason direct marketers need a term like convergence is ego. At its root, convergence is basically a marketing strategy that carries a brand throughout all aspects of an organization, including advertising (both direct and not), back-end operations and customer interactions. But anything containing the B-word is anathema among direct marketers. The DM industry has never gotten over brand advertising having a sexy image among corporate leaders, while direct response has traditionally been pushed into a corner, where it sits sucking its thumb and attempting to assuage its bruised feelings by snuffling loudly about how measurable it is.
Well, here’s a news flash, folks: Brand advertisers aren’t waking up to the power of direct marketing: They’ve woken up. And this new awareness doesn’t represent a 21st century paradigm: It’s basic sound marketing strategy that uses all the tools at an organization’s fingertips. And finally, brand advertisers don’t care about convergence, or finally giving direct marketing its due: They’re just interested – rightly so – in generating the required number of sales or leads or what have you.
Short of locking 500 consultants into a room and not letting them out until they come up with a single definition of convergence, it’s time to take this so-broad-as-to-be-indefinable term and apply some “into-the-box” thinking – namely, by putting it into a box and then dropping said box either into an active volcano, or perhaps the deepest part of the Mariana Trench.
After we’ve done that, let’s get on with the business of conducting smart, integrated marketing and not worrying what the hell we’re going to call it. I’ll take the useful knowledge from ten breakout sessions on convergence and balance it on a scale against the wisdom from one good case study. Can we come to a convergence consensus on this?
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