I attended enough marketing conferences and events this year to realise this headline is no surprise.  Classic response which I can hear now – “we are in a new paradigm, with new challenges that no-one has seen before – time to get back to basics, and forget all this talk about social this/ that”.

Top Marketing Trends for 2009: Execs ‘Sick’ of Web 2 | MC Marketing Charts

#4. Marketers “Sick” of Web 2.0: Twice as many marketers are “sick” of hearing about Web 2.0 and related buzzwords such as “blogs” and “social networking” compared with last year’s survey.

I know enough people in marketing who actually do get it, that I feel safe in generalising here – the comment is aimed at the rest 🙂

What is interesting here is that web 2.0 however one cares to define it is being written off by marketing before they try it.  This is not SEO or fake emails to bloggers – its about being genuine.  Here we have some concepts that have the potential to transform business, marketing and business models, and already it is being written off, before even trying them.

I keep going back to Cluetrain.  Written in 1999 it is even further ahead of its time than we realised.  it does not help that it is an awful, and disorganised read.  Nontheless it is prescient and visionary in its beliefs.  Cluetrain is the real web 2.0 and the tools we hear of such as blogs and wiki’s are transitory, and replaceable.  The concept lies in wisdom of employees, enjoined with the wisdom of customers that develops a new level of understanding of products and services.  This understanding will make marketing messages irrelevant.

It will take us some time to get with with traditional thinkers apparently, but the web will take customers there before corporations.  The corporations who ‘get’ that will be amongst the winners.