This is the first of a series of blogs that I hope to write regularly. Being the first, it is long.  The future ones will be shorter and sharper to the point. I hope you will find them welcome and useful.
 
What you work at and how well you do it can identify not only the quality and relevance of your work habits but your lifestyle, and your personality as well. If your work is approached creatively and productively, it can deepen and expand your experiences and help build your self-confidence as well as the confidence of others.
 
I have found that working with insight, intelligence, and diligence produces not only solutions to the work at hand but thoughts and questions that stimulate dialogue, speculation and debate about a broader group of issues. Thinking about an issue and solving a problem are not like the single bullet of a rifle shot that hits the center of the target. It is more like the pellets of a shotgun that hit both the center of the target and its periphery. It is as if success at hitting the target creates more targets.
 
And so I am creating what I have named The Lester Chronicles. These Chronicles will not only be aimed at the former center of the target that I named and defined as Direct Marketing but will reflect how our discipline continues to evolve to become at this time the practice we now call Relationship Marketing.
 
That practice will, in time, be once again transformed. It will evolve into a discipline that will change not only how we advertise existing products and services but how the products and services will themselves be transformed.
 
We are entering an age that I think of as a time of Personal Manufacturing, Personal Marketing and Personal Advertising. The revolution of our time is that the dominant role of products and services is being replaced by products, services and information that satisfy the needs and wants of individual consumers.
 
The Industrial Revolution is long over. The mass produced product that was claimed to be suitable for everyone is less and less suitable to anyone. The product, no matter how innovative, is no longer the hero. The current and future hero is information. Information that helps us create relevant messages to the vast and  varied number of individual consumers and their myriad of differentiated needs.
 
For years advertisers, their agencies and the media have defined the prime marketing target as young families in their twenties, thirties and forties, the years that we believed to be the most acquisitive.  But that is changing.
 
The next revolution in marketing will be to serve the changing lifestyles and life needs of an ageing, baby boom  population who continue to be active consumers in their 50’s, 60’s and 70’s and  many who will go on to their 80’s, 90’s, or even 100’s.
 
The effect of this increasing consumer longevity is that the goals and values of manufacturing, marketing and advertising are no longer just to make sales but to make customers for life. And those lives will not only be longer, but richer and more varied in their search for satisfaction, products and services.  The targets of marketing will become less about products and more about the services they provide as it accommodates to these changes in values, life stages and life styles. The concept of Lifetime Value will become the key metric of marketing. 
 
The principles and processes of mass production and mass distribution have become obsolete. Manufacturers, distributors and retailers, in fact all who advertise, are beginning to recognize that they must focus increasingly on making customers rather than just making sales.  Just as the magazine industry gave up its focus on single copy sales for subscriptions, so will we create new forms of loyalty marketing.
 
The Industrial Revolution is behind us, and The Information Age has matured. Many of the old mass media are losing ground as we begin to provide information to smaller groups and even single consumers. The Internet has brought to the forefront the idea of interactive marketing. Millions of sellers and buyers are now involved in an increasingly personal dialogue. Marketing objectives are achieved not only by what we know but more importantly the increasing number of ways that we can use that knowledge.
 
As I look forward to creating a series of these Chronicles, I anticipate that they will not just be about the general subject of marketing and advertising products and services. They will include what’s currently and specifically what’s on my mind and my desk in this revolutionary digital era.
 
Let’s use the extraordinary, interactive technology we have to begin a Wunderman Forum in which we all participate. Let’s share both our knowledge and the potential of a warm and wonderful exchange of true collegiality. With your help we will create what will truly become The Lester Chronicles.