The Curse of the Divider...

By Jade Rice, Digital Marketing Executive

It’s an easy trap to fall into; one that I, myself, have been witness to and, yes, I am ashamed to say, may have even been a part of.

I, readers, used to be *deep breath* a Divider.

A Divider. That terrible type of person who divides - even pigeon-holes – office teams into ‘Old School’ and ‘New School’. ‘Old School’, in my case, consisting of marketing or PR activity that often consists of offline, more traditional means of selling to your audience; telemarketing, newspaper/magazine press releases, direct mail, etc. And my school; the ‘New School’, comprising of social media, SEO, PPC, video and all the LOLs that came with being digital. I believed that ‘Old School’ and ‘New School’ were mutually exclusive, separate entities; there was no cross-over. ‘Old School’ did whatever ‘Old School’ did – and ‘New School’? Well, we rocked.

Oh, how wrong I was.

Well, not totally wrong. ‘New School’ did rock – but so did ‘Old School’. I just couldn’t see the power of it. And I certainly couldn’t see the power of – well, I’ll get to that…

One day, I was cornered into making a telemarketing call. Ugh. Moi? Telemarketing?! As it turned out, the client I was asked to contact was actually somebody I’d been trying to connect with across social media but, whatever I did, I couldn’t get a response. None of the usual tactics had worked and I was running out of ideas. The client, I discovered during the (hesitant) call, was, in fact, new to the concept of all things digital and was still finding his feet – but he was more than happy to chat over the phone.

Then the penny dropped.

The call had provided me with the opportunity to speak to this client directly, find out what made him tick, what it was that he needed for his business – questions that, in this particular case, I couldn’t answer via any digital methods.

The call resulted in a social media campaign for the client and total belief in the power of cross-marketing; the power of bridging the gap between ‘Old School’ and ‘New School’, and the realisation that, no matter how devoted you are, there are just some things that one type of marketing channel cannot do – but, bridged with another, you can get the job done – and get it done well. Sure, both channels can work perfectly fine alone, but combine the two, and the results can be staggering.

Plus, it means you can stop saying stupid phrases like ‘Old School’ and ‘New School’…