What Does Marketing Mean in a “Connected World”?

More than a decade ago, thunder::tech planted our flag as “an integrated marketing agency” – long before integrated became a buzzword in the industry. After a great deal of exploration, we recently unveiled our new tagline: “integrated marketing for a connected world.”



So what’s that mean?

We’re living in a time when things are connected more closely than ever. That doesn’t just mean people connecting through Facebook or Snapchat or instant message—the technology exists today to have your car talk to your thermostat to turn up the heat because you’re on the way home; or you can use your phone to see how many eggs are left in the fridge. This technology has accelerated the pace at which information is shared; so today’s brands need to figure out how to connect with their customers better, faster and more efficiently than ever before.

Integrated and Connected

As far as “integrated,” the marketing agency space has become noisy with every firm describing themselves as an integrated agency—if they live up to the promise or not. We wanted to move beyond this descriptor and start to talk about how we can help clients in this new interconnected landscape. Integrated marketing approaches aren’t going anywhere; in fact, we believe these are still the early days, and most companies haven’t really embraced or achieved truly integrated marketing.

The success of integration ultimately depends on how you reach your audiences. The connected environment offers a multitude of new challenges: it’s tougher to do, but easier to track; more difficult to keep up with, but easier to experiment with; and so on. And the pace of change isn’t going to slow down any time soon.

Today’s connected world has to manage and take advantage of four broad practice areas:

• Content:: useful content that helps first, then sells; distributed in every channel where your audience is participating
• Connectivity:: always-on smartphones, cars, wearables and other devices means instant access to your brand: anytime, anywhere
• Connections:: building useful CRM/social/email and other proprietary opt-in audience connections
• Customer Experience:: tracking and improving all touch points with your audience to improve the customer journey before, during and after the sale, helping to establish repeat buyers and referral sources

A connected world gives marketers the ability to talk to and target audiences better, faster and more efficiently. It means using all of your marketing resources to make a meaningful connection, not just a brand impression. For your brand to lead, your marketing not only needs to be integrated, but it needs to build personal connections in our increasingly connected world.