I recently shared my thoughts on StopPress.co.nz on what’s happened in New Zealand’s marketing world in 2010. It got me looking back on what has been a great year. It also got me thinking about what lies in store for 2011.

Here are some of the biggest professional realisations I will take away from 2010, as posted on my company’s blog.

I’ve heard or read that many marketing types believe that one of the themes of social media next year will be continuous dialogue with customers. For a while I thought this sounded great; ongoing dialogue means more opportunities for marketing. And this is all synonymous with social media, or so they have us believe…

Having mulled it over, I’m not convinced that ongoing dialogue is the right way forward for most brands. Let me quickly clarify something. I feel that, broadly speaking, there are two types of brands when it comes to social media and online marketing: those that I call ‘utility brands’ and those that aren’t. Utility brands are those in the utility sectors themselves, along with pseudo-utility brands like telcos, banks and public sector organisations. Utility brands are those where we have few opportunities to switch (think long term contracts with electricity companies or telcos). Non-utility brands are those that we can pick up and discard easily. If a restaurant is rubbish, we just won’t go back, for instance.

For the rest of the blog post, please click here.