OPINION: A digital marketer's letter to #Santaclaus

I know! It’s still not cold up in the North Pole yet and you might be in the middle of a lead-gen campaign to recruit all those elves to deliver your gifts this #Christmas. But we marketers start early. You must know that! Given that I am in the profession that pretty much reinvented you and your little red-nosed ride, I want to take a moment to put my little wish list on behalf of my breed — the beleaguered #digital marketer.

So here it goes. Firstly, can you get clients to see ‘#mobile’ for what it is? I am sure even you are using an #iPhone to deliver your gifts this Christmas (and if you are using the iOS6 maps… Good Luck!) but for us, ‘mobile’ has been pretty much confined to cool-looking Powerpoint slides and random case studies from Digital Buzz Blog and #Mashable.  

While everyone and their mother has an iPhone in the town where I live, mobile is still a hard-sell. For some reason, clients — who for a fact admit that they can’t live without their iPhones for like more than 60 seconds — just don’t seem to buy the truth that their audiences are spending as much or even more time on their mobile phone than #TV! 

Seriously, why have you been so generous to folks who drive TV? So, stop watching that episode of Dancing with the Elves on your #iPad and listen to our plight. It’s time you help us sell mobile easier this Christmas.

Secondly, can you please kill the idea/notion of a ‘#digital’ agency? I mean seriously. It was OK to separate it out when the only true mass medium was TV and ‘digital’ was what those geeks in dirty jeans do in between their caffeine binges. I have solid proof that modern life IS digital. Heck, even you live on digital. Before ‘digital’ no one had a clue how to track you on Christmas night! It’s really funny when people say, I do ‘digital’. I am thinking...as opposed to what? #Analog advertising?  Did I miss a memo? 

A couple of days ago, when for some reason you got really pissed off and let #Sandy barrel its way through my favorite #NYC, there were more images on #Instagram (10 per second) than all other ‘non-digital’ media combined. First responders relied on #Twitter and it was the #1 news source. #Google is where they found out the flooding levels. #Facebook was where support was shared. I am sure you are on your Facebook right now reading about this on your news feed. If ‘Digital’ is the new ‘ATL’ then why do we need a ‘Digital’ agency?

Lastly, I want to a ‘2 figure’ share of the market. Despite compelling evidence to the contrary, we in the marketing world somehow believe that we only live in the ‘digital’ world for less than 5 per cent of the time and for 95 per cent of the time, we live on our couches and watch TV and read print? So while you are delivering your gifts to us, can you give us a decent share of the market that reflects how people really live their lives? Is that too much to ask?  

Santa! It’s #2012 and if the #mayancalendar is right, then for all practical purposes you are going to have one long #holiday season post #december21. Hence my early letter to you. Come by faster this  #Christmas before the world comes to an end and make the clients magically ‘#like’ us digital guys.

Because the real world already does. Just search for the #hashtags in this little article on Twitter and you will see it for yourselves. Hopefully this year, you will redeem us out of our ‘line item’ lives and make it a magical Christmas for us all.

And for the record, I do believe in #magic.