The future of Marketing Communication: Towards an “Ecosystem of connected experiences” in a multi-channel, connected world
Prof. dr. Pieter Vijn
Nyenrode Business Universiteit
Lecture Microsoft Europe, 2010

In this lecture we will address the Turbulence in the Business and Media Landscape, its implications for Integrated Marketing Communication. Supporting Research will be presented. Specifically, the transformative role of Digital Media towards the way consumers looks to Brands and the way Ubiquitous Broadband is changing our approach to daily live.
We will argue to redefine IMC into Synchronized Marketing Communication. We also will explore the importance of the concept’ Synchronicity” in the context of a connected web of Branded Experiences: a Brand ecosystem. Finally some implications for the future of Agencies will be discussed
A Tsunami of Change
Changes are all around us. Adage refers to a Chaos scenario in Communication: “what happens if traditional marketing collapses before a better alternative is established,… and the new digital technologies still lack the infrastructure and scale to support the minimum of mainstream marketing requirements”. Sealey from Coca Cola expectsadvertising to become digital, personal and addressable. He states: “These trends are like a Tsunami and will sweep away our historical model”. Mainstream advertisers are now switching substantial amounts of budgets to the “Digital Space”. McKinsey list in their Global survey of Business executives (2005), top focus to: Extreme Competition, Great Turbulences, Oversupply and
Commoditization, Blurring of Business Boundaries, Fragmentation of Mass Marketing and Explosion of Digital Media. A striking example of “Blurring” was in Business week
(oct. 2005) in an article with the heading: Samsung The Network: Blurring the line between ads and media like never before. Samsung is creating a (Virtual AD) Network by buying Space on-say -400 sites. Then they can leverage