Marketing for Tomorrow, Not Yesterday: Surviving and Thriving In The Insight Economy by Zain Raj
Zain is the President & CEO of Shapiro+Raj, an insights and inspiration company in Chicago. Zain is also the founder and CEO of zednext, an ideas incubator that takes an objective and disruptive look at trends to help marketers and business leaders with the increasingly data-driven, digitally led and insights-driven world.
Most recently he was CEO of Epsilon Agency Services, the largest global CRM and Digital agency. He was previously CEO of Euro RSCG Discovery. He has also held senior leadership roles at FCB Worldwide, J. Walter Thompson and Grey.
Zain has contributed his insights to The Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek, Fast Company, Forbes, Crain’s and publications of the nation’s top business schools.
The Host’s Perspective:
While it’s hard to notice, we are living through a period of massive change in marketing. In fact, a research study by Adobe found that 76% of marketers think marketing has changed more in the past two years than the previous 50.
The role of marketers is quickly moving from being the “make it pretty” department to being held accountable for results tied to revenues. Not only is that terrifying for many traditional marketers, lots of CEOs and boards are waking up to the fact that their old-school marketing people have not evolved and are increasingly irrelevant. Which might explain why a Fournaise Group study determined that 80% of CEOs don’t trust and are not impressed with their marketing teams.
Too many marketers today are marketing for yesterday.
Like an army preparing to fight the last war. That rarely ends well. Zain Raj’s book explains why all this change is happening, how it is affecting marketing and, most importantly, helps you separate the signal from the noise and get back to basics that are important for modern marketing. One of my favorite ideas from the book is the concept that successful modern marketers are like decathletes – achieving strength in multiple disciplines – as opposed to being one sport wonders.
After reading this book, you’ll find yourself applying the litmus test of modern marketing by knowing if your marketing is oriented to the past or the future.
Listen to the Interview:
Show Notes:
“Marketing for Tomorrow, Not Yesterday: Surviving and Thriving In The Insight Economy” by Zain Raj
“The Art of War” by Sun Tzu
“Kotler on Marketing” by Philip Kotler
“Taiko” by
“Ogilvy on Advertising” by David Ogilvy
Zain’s Website (ZainRaj.com)
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