What's keeping them up at night?

So the ANA published it's annual survey of marketer's top concerns this week ...ANA: Integrated Marketing Top Issue On Marketers' Minds-MediaPost ... and there you have it.

Integrated Marketing is the chief concern.

Followed by:

"Here's how marketers prioritized the other nine issues in the 2008 survey:

2. Marketing accountability
3. Aligning the marketing organization with innovation
4. Brand building
5. Media proliferation
6. Advertising creative that achieves business results
7. Consumers' control over what and how they view advertising
8. Attracting and retaining top talent
9. Globalization of marketing efforts
10. Multicultural marketing"

-as reported by MP

But, of course I would be confounded by this!

How is it that Consumer's control of what and how they view advertising would rank only #7 on our leading marketing brainiacs list?

Because ... isn't that what is going to drive any of the other 9 concerns? ... and, unless I have my sonar completely off kilter ... this is the single biggest issue facing us ... advertising engagement and effectiveness.

Consumers are tuning out or turning away with more and more abandon.

One key mission of the ANA is this ...

"Helping marketers navigate through all of the above is the purpose of the "Marketing & Media Ecosystem 2010" research begun last year by ANA, the Interactive Advertising Bureau, the American Association of Advertising Agencies and management consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton."

(I think in this regard I keep paying closer attention to what Starcom and OMD are doing to figure that out than to any of the collective "A's". Only wish I knew, and could comment on what Group M was doing ... )

Frankly, delving into understanding how consumers interact now with advertising , and how to optimize our messaging to meet their needs would be one solid reason I could think of to keep our clients (or encouraging prospective clients) wanting to do business with my agency.

And one passing comment on that disintermediation thing ... seems to me the quickest road to that isn't spelled g-o-o-g-l-e ... instead, it might just be seperating creative messaging from media.

The quicker we could unravel the mystery of how to effectively communicate with the "Consumer in Control" ... the quicker we would begin to answer any of the other 9concerns of marketers.

Integrated marketing? ... starts with getting a customer to integrate with your message.