Converge: Transforming Business at the Intersection of Marketing and Technology

Foreword

This book is insightful, relevant, and will appeal to anyone with an interest in marketing products and managing successful, sustainable businesses.

Bob and Ray set out their arguments for the convergence of creativity, technology, and media—simply and unambiguously. They make us think differently about marketing and about business. They help us understand what’s going on and how to survive in the evolving world of consumer-selection.

Creativity, technology, and media all serve to enrich the consumer experience. They have always done so in their, hitherto, largely separate ways.

But the convergence that is so well described in this book makes us challenge traditional assumptions about what we do, how we do it, and how we are organized.

Theirs is a world where success depends on getting rid of silos; where there is a coming together, a process of joined-up thinking on a massive scale recognizing the connectedness of things.

The democratization of data and of creativity, cross-disciplinary thinking, and next-generation storytelling present a compelling vision of the changes organizations must make if they are to succeed.

I have witnessed these trends in my own company. Increasingly, evolving consumer behaviors are requiring us to develop a more coordinated ecosystem of activity.

In particular, the proliferation of mobile technology globally is building an intense, always-on, one-to-one relationship between brands, businesses, and consumers. This is already having a profound ...