Last week, I was the keynote speaker at the Forrester Marketing Forum in Miami. Forrester is the very prestigious marketing consulting firm and think-tank headquartered in Cambridge, Mass.  The subject of the conference was "Reinventing Marketing for Customer Centricity." As they said in their program guide, "customer centricity isn't a new idea—we've all been talking about it for a long time. The reality is that few firms have figured out the recipe for successfully transforming their business."

The subject of the conference was very relevant to our practice and that is probably why I was chosen to be the keynote speaker. We, for years, have been expert at the idea of customer centricity. It’s a basic part of our global discipline. My talk was titled "The Customer and Customer Relationships as Heroes."   I worked hard on getting it right because Forrester not only consults but rates and ranks agencies and all of us are eager to have them raise our rating.

The opening lines of my talk were: "David Ogilvy was famous for creating his agency's slogan: "we sell or else."  I went on to say that, in this customer-centric era, we here at Wunderman have moved further ahead by recognizing and proving that "we create relationships or else."

I also said "successful consumer-centric companies now know that to engage in relevant dialogues with their customers and prospects, they must have in place state-of-the-art, digital direct marketing technologies and highly trained personnel.  Digital technology has changed the content and the context of advertising."

I also explained that marketing online is not the same as mass advertising.  We know that what happens "After The Click" is critical and we have become expert at analyzing critical data and converting prospects into profitable ongoing customers.  Creating relationships and customers is almost like converting water into wine—part magic, part talent, and all part of the "Relationship Marketing" discipline that we have successfully introduced to every part of the economically developed world. The foundation of our practice is that data creates relevance, relevance and interactivity create relationships.  This is never more true, or immediate, than online.