Executive Editor Brad Berens sits down with the integrated marketing guru to chat about the big picture for marketing's present and future.

Don E. Schultz is Professor Emeritus-in-Service of Integrated Marketing Communications at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. He's also president of the consulting firm Agora, Inc., and is on the faculties of Cranfield School of Management, Bedfordshire, UK; Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia; and Tsinghua University, Beijing, China. He speaks around the world, writes prolifically, and was founding editor of the Journal of Direct Marketing.

Recently, Professor Schultz sat down with me to chat about integrated marketing, interactive marketing, and the upcoming changes facing marketing of all varieties. We started off talking about the differences between marketing in the U.S. and in Asia, as well as how consumers might lash back on behavioral targeting. Then we moved on to topics that include:

Page 1: Introduction
Page 2: Changes in private label brands
Page 3: Will the Chinese buy Wal-Mart?
Page 4: Interactive marketing and integration
Page 5: What is real among the new new media?
Page 6: Simultaneous Media Consumption (SIMM)
Page 7: Don Schultz's 2006 Predictions

Brad Berens: We have been increasing our integrated marketing coverage a bit. And, so I thought I would go to the source -- which is you -- and get your take on how you think things have developed since you spoke to us back in September of 2004. So question number one: do you think things are getting any better, in terms of marketing departments all working together to sing the same song?

Don Schultz: The issue today, Brad, is not "integration." The question is: how do we do it?  Everybody knows they have to do it. The big problem they have is the organizational structures, and the problems they have internally, and making it work. I was just looking at the Wall Street Journal, where Publicis USA now has promoted Debbie Yount to "chief holistic officer."

Berens:  I know, wasn't that a remarkable title.

Schultz: That is a great title. I am not sure how you would explain that to anybody who says, "What do you do?" I guess you work with holistics. But, I think the real issue today is: how do we do this stuff? And, I don't think anybody has broken the code on it, yet. I think it gets much more complicated than it has been, particularly when you see the blogs starting to pop up. The big thing I see that is really, really seeming to come to the front now, is "in store" and the experience at the point of purchase. There's a lot of conversation about that, and how do we do that, and how do we include all of that in marketing?

They keep getting hung up on the issue of "how do we measure it?" And, no one seems to recognize that you measure it by whether or not it has a financial impact -- and not how many people passed by it, and those kinds of things. And, those are sort of the things I see going on. 

Schultz:  I have spent, oh, about nearly three months in China this year, which is, I think, where the most interesting things I have observed are going on. The thing that I continue to see there is that they just leapt over the twentieth century. They did not even pay any attention to it.

Berens:  Ha. Right into the twenty-first.

Schultz: They went right into the twenty-first century, and I think it really has an impact because, in essence, they have gone from signs, posters and maybe a few crudely reduced newspapers straight to digital. Now, I don't know what that does to traditional media. Do they develop the same way they did in the West, or are they stuck in a system, in a model, that may, or may not, have any big impact going forward? It is pretty hard to believe that television won't have an impact in China, or India, but, by the same token, maybe if all of this stuff goes digital, maybe that is going to be where television is going to be reinvented.

Berens: I think the thing that is most interesting to me about what is going on in Asia right now is how many light years ahead of us they are when it comes to mobile.

Schultz: Oh, absolutely. I mean, we are not even a third-world country when it comes to that.  And, I don't see any progress. I mean, all we have got are a bunch of carriers that keep trying to add more features and don't improve the system, and don't improve the coverage, so you cannot get any signal anyways, so it doesn't make a difference what you have got on the phone.

Berens: I used to work for EarthLink, as you may remember. EarthLink and SK, the Korean Company, are starting a new service called Helio, which they are claiming is going to be an Asian-class, Asian-style mobile phone here in the U.S. But, it is pre-launch, right now. I will be very curious how the service is different, and how they can actually achieve market penetration; and then, what that will mean for people who are trying to sell things?

Schultz: It is going to have a big impact on them, because what I think it does is to turn almost all of our promotional activity into instantaneous and immediate response.

Berens: And local.

Schultz: And local, very local.

Berens: To continue with mobile for a moment, have you been tracking the big shift coming in mobile next year -- all mobile devices are going to have, by law, a GPS chip in them? I have been very curious what that will mean. There is a creepy part where suddenly Wal-Mart will know that you are on Aisle Four holding a package of Huggies. But, on the other hand, it seems like it opens up new opportunities for marketers.

Schultz: Well, I think it is a very interesting idea, and the only question I have is consumer backlash.

Berens: Sure.

Schultz: I think at some point, the consumer is going to get to a point that they say, "We have had enough of this." And, I think what we have a tendency to do is -- when we reach those points -- we tend to overreact, and we kill off everything.

Berens: Like House Bill 29, right now?

Schultz: Yes. And, then we just stop everything. And, I am not sure that that is good for either side. But, by the same token, I think that the real challenge here is this: I don't think consumers mind giving you the data, if they think they get something back, but, I don't think we have figured out a way to give them anything back… other than more of the same stuff.

Berens: And, what would that same stuff be? In my experience consumers are willing to sell their privacy, and all of their information, for ten cents off of a roll of toilet paper.

Schultz: Right.

Berens: As long as they belong to some club, as long as they initiate, or you invite and they decide.

Schultz: Exactly -- they have some control over it. And, I think that that is a critical ingredient.