Bits over Baghdad

Look out, world. We’re no longer just “the marketing guys down the hall”.

I’ve seen a couple of striking images lately. One was of an Iraqi man looting a shattered railroad car, carrying off a box labeled “Snickers Bits”. In the other, a young girl pulled up her pink Aladdin sweatshirt to show a recent shrapnel scar.

Besides the irony (Disney’s Aladdin, in Baghdad?) and the obvious tragedy of it all, these pictures vividly reinforced just how far American brand marketing has penetrated the rest of the world. After a decade of embargo, sanctions, and war, Iraqis are craving a Snickers spinoff product I’ve never even heard of.

Call it the triumph of the free market, western cultural imperialism, or a sign of the apocalypse. No matter how you slice it, brand-based marketing has conquered the world.

Sure, we already know this. Big deal. But now that it’s done it’s global end-zone dance, marketing is entering a new era of “lifestyle brands”, “creating demand”, and of course information technology. It”s getting hard to clearly distinguish brand, marketing, and product – especially when the product itself is something like entertainment content. It’s all a blur. Ancient ad-guru prophecies are coming true.

What does this mean? If you’re reading this, you’re likely already mixed up with the marketing business somehow. (Admit it: you watch TV for the commercials.) And it seems to me that we’re all on the ground floor of something big, if a little scary. Like it or not, we’ll see a world where marketing is part of everything, and everything contributes to marketing. Business strategy and marketing strategy will be one and the same. The CMO shall sit at the right hand of the CEO.