Why does Eugene Lee dislike the term ‘digital-marketing’?

Sponsorship and experiential marketing – these are marketing concepts that have leveraged on each other to create experiences for consumers through engagement. The current reality however restricts the traditional execution of these strategies. 

MARKETING Magazine’s CMO Roundtable 6 investigated this paradigm shift. Our speakers for this session were Regional Director of McDonalds, Eugene Lee and Director of Marketing for F&N Beverages, Graham Lim. 

As moderator for the session, I questioned my own understanding of the two marketing strategies and how much have these terms and their use as strategies evolved in the history of marketing itself? 

Since April 19, I’ve been looking forward to Mondays because it means two new episodes of The Last Dance will be released on Netflix. Besides being an absolutely compelling documentary series on the game of basketball itself, what has me hooked are the interviews and archival footage of Michael Jordan himself.

For someone born after his time, watching this series truly confirmed that there is no lie in the age-old phrase ‘no one like mike’. He is the ideal influencer any brand would want to be associated with. 

In 2020, sponsorship and experiential marketing cannot be discussed without at least mentioning influencer marketing, and a huge portion of this documentary is essentially a lesson on that. 

There’s even a part in the documentary during the interviews where someone says that when the Nike & Michael Jordan’s collaboration was first contracted, Nike hoped to sell USD 3 million worth of Air Jordan sneakers by the end of 4th year of the contract but ended up selling USD 136 million worth in the first  year. Let that sink in. 

I know these are exceptional examples – but inspiring enough to consider during a webinar that discusses the potential these marketing strategies have. 

Executing sponsorship and experiential marketing when large gatherings are probably not going to be allowed till the end of the year, is a tricky hurdle to jump across gracefully. 

However, our two speakers who represent brands that are experts in this, presented a list of tips and insights on how to manuevarure through the current challenges. 

After two detailed and valuable knowledge sharing, during the rapid fire Q&A session, a question was posed to Eugene on the importance of digital marketing in the current time and if businesses should forget about traditional marketing altogether. As a reply, Eugene said he strongly dislikes (as he found a synonym to replace a strong word such as ‘hate’) the term digital marketing. 

Watch our highlight video below to find out why Eugene has reservations against the term digital marketing and after that, register for our upcoming CMO Roundtable 6 with Head of Country Marketing for Grab, Sulin Lau and Head of Marketing at Wipro Ginvera Marketing Ent Sdn Bhd, Rishi Pahwa as they discuss ‘A marketer’s higher calling: Jumping from 4Ps to 4Es’. 

50% of your registration fees will be channeled to MERCY Malaysia to support our frontliners.