Last month down in Adelaide, Marketing Week’s headline was “Forget what you know. New rules. New Ideas.” I went down there to listen, probe and oppose this point of view and I found that its not the ideas and rules that are the problem. Its the habits. Listen to some of the comments from people who attended Marketing Week in the vodcast below, and then read about how marketers need to revolutionise their work habits.

Marketing Revolution! New Rules. New Ideas. Forget everything you know… Really?

The results of our poll are in, and it seems that most of you (49 percent) agree with Marketing Week that we need to forget what we know and embrace new rules and ideas if we want to succeed in the digital space. Only 20 percent of you think that very little has changed and that its the same old game as before. I guess Im in that 20 percent, so heres a shot from the vocal minority.

Ok, so maybe there have been a few changes, some new technologies that you don’t understand, but really FORGET EVERYTHING YOU KNOW – that sounds scary?

Marketers around the world know the fundamentals of marketing, but maybe they’re becoming lazy?

Busy days, tightening budgets, short deadlines – the pressures of day-to-day work life – encourage us to fall back on whats easy, what we know.

I call that lazy. 

Let’s look at some of the fundamental rules and ideas that make us marketers:

1. Understand your target market
2. Understand the competitive landscape
3. Build an offering or position of value and difference
4. Build emotive and pragmatic values that connect your brand and customer
5. Communicate with your target market
6. Persuade them to purchase and refer

Now let’s consider just some of the habits that make us marketers:

1. Reach and frequency are a measure
2. Stay on brand message
3. Simple messages that don’t relate
4. Media choices – Press, TV or Radio spot?
5. Full colour vs 2 colour vs 1 colour print job?

These points don’t seem to be in line with the rules and ideas of marketing. Theyre just  things we do habitually.

So we need a revolution. The Habitual Revolution.

The solution to this marketing problem is easy – organisations and people just need to change!

So heres my Top 10 tips for marketers stuck in a habitual rut:

1. Ask more questions
2. Present and invent new ideas
3. Expect your agencies to innovate
4. Talk to innovative agencies
5. Review your process
6. Take risks
7. Learn
8. Experiment
9. Step out of your comfort zone
10. Look at what other categories are doing

But most of all, just ditch the habits and get back to the fundamentals of marketing

Now listen to some of the comments that Love Digital collected from Marketing Week in the vodcast below.

What do you think?

• Are marketers just putting digital into the too hard box and resorting to habits?
• If we do need new rules for new media, what might some of those new rules be?