I don't believe the marketing campaign is dead, but it's definitely had a facelift and a tummy tuck. Throughout my career I have used campaigns as a tool - defining the target, the message, the creative, the channels. Campaigns can be fluid and flexible and long-term. Trust me, the campaigns I create are a commitment.

I agree with the overall sentiment here but the idea of a "campaign" in today's marketing world is more of a strategy or tactic. Keep your eye on the big picture at all times and make sure that all the tools and channels you employ are focused and committed to your customers first as well as your brand.

I think much like everything else in the marketing world, it has to be tweeked with our world today. People have said in the past, "Email is dead". While it's not as prominent as it was 10 years ago, it still has it's place. Campaigns aren't the same, but they are changing and adapting!

I agree with Pam. Marketing Campaigns are not "dead", they have just evolved and changed from the traditional . Personally, they help give me a focus and helps me to define my targets. I can also quantify the results and look back at previous campaigns and make comparisons.

Evolution of marketing is that everything changes but doesn't entirely disappear. Marketing is additive, not subtractive. But certain areas have a better ROI than others. If time is money, and depending on the industry you're in, finding the right mix is an individual issue. 

All I know...marketing is much harder than it used to be. Thanks for the information.

Mike, 
Great post! Very thought provoking and an idea I agree with conceptually. However, I think that the campaign can exist within the world of inbound marketing. Yes, the messaging and content have to be about your prospects and yes the conversation has to be dynamic. But by focusing the tactics for a short period of time, say 30 to 60 days you can drive traffic, generate leads, and close sales in a more productive way. We consider it a second level of strategy that includes all the inbound tactics. Thanks again for the thought leadership. Love the conversation!

Great article! I agree. Campaigns are a one time event, whereas marketing has evolved and changed to be more responsive and directly relating to the customer's needs. Thanks for the great post!

As an advertising professional I have to say that the advertising and media companies are the most responsible for killing a great way to sell products and services. Ad agencies have continued to grind out pretty poor advertising campaigns and then the media companies stepped in and made matters worse by creating the myth that people are stupid and need to be hit over the head at least 100 times before they will notice your ad or take action. 
 
We don't pay attention to campaigns anymore because advertising is rarely creative or cleaver and talks down to most consumers. Consumers have learned to block it out, click it away or turn it off. All in the name of short term profits. Well done! 
 
The advertising industry has eaten its young and they wonder why their business continues to spiral downward.  
 
The campaign is not necessarily dead but it is in a self inflicted, deep coma, one it may never recover from. As someone who loves advertising and a great campaign, it is a sad day indeed!

For years now the adage to remember in selling / marketing has been ... "What's in it for me?"  
 
What does it do for me or what do I get from your product or service ... the features are great (what we tend to put out in our marketing pieces)but the "benefit(s)" is/are what the consumer supposedly buys. 
 
So I agree that we need to "market" by being relevant and keeping in front of the consumer via social media and create the consistent message for them - that is what I think you are saying also. But also agree that campaigns can be used as another of the tools to "focus" on specific promotions to draw the consumer to you. 
 
Great post and comments by others.

Great post! Strong brands are built through consistency and by providing value to prospects from the get go, before they sign a contract. That's what I love about inbound and integrated marketing! Good strategies today push ONE great idea, are ongoing, and work across a variety of channels. This gives us all a chance to tweak, improve, and be awesome. Why scratch the dog idea and replace it with a baby? Maybe you just need a brown lab instead of a German Shepherd.

I think this can also be dependent on your sector. Authors still want to run a book campaign, because it helps to push for that initial novel or book launch, but unlike many campaigns, the book campaign doesn't have to end. However, I think it's a good idea for marketers to shift their focus to more customer centered systems.

Marketing campaign is like a news break which can be combined with good web content. It is about starting new relationships. In our business, our customers are the Utility companies, they are not your Internet savy die hard social media fans. Workers are not given Internet access because management fear cyber attack. Under such a scenario, a campaign is strictly informational: to make them aware who you are, what problem you can help them solve, continuing dialog and providing extra values and building trust. This will be the first stage, in bound marketing comes later when one becomes known. But I think I am 0.1% of the mass marketing crowd striving to differentiate themselves.

I believe that the concept of a marketing campaign, whilst not actually 'dead' has undergone a radical shift. They can now work as a extra push for something specific which operates with the confines of an existing ongoing process of engagement. I recently had the experience of producing a campaign for a local company who insisted on having one for a one-off online crowd sourcing competition they were doing; they had no social media or online presence to speak of and they assumed (wrongly) that this would give them the votes they needed. It goes without saying that as soon as the competition ended, their involvement in the accounts created ended with it! The old adage that you can lead a horse to water still holds true ... !

Campaigns are for products/services/offers with a short shelf life. Image branding via communication continues throughout the life of the product or service. The Internet is to product claims what HD is to actor facial blemishes, showing flaws via access to all published material over long periods of time. In the past library microfiche searches gave us what we get instantly via an Internet search. Determine product/service value and present consistently using all media at one's disposal. Anything less is simply "but wait, there's more."

Campaigns provide the much-needed opportunity to remind the audience that you're there and have something worth considering. They provide that "jolt" into action that most consumers (even b2b buyers) need to get off the dime.

The word Campaign is used in war and politics. Those are both short-term efforts that look only to win - so I agree with Mike. 
 
Strategy on the other hand is alive and well. Companies that market with a purpose far out perform companies that randomly perform social and other marketing activities.

We are strong believers of the "campaign is dead." Campaigns lead to marketing highs and low. In the age of social media you can keep your customers engaged 24/7. Our CEO, Riley Gibson, wrote in FastCoCreate last month about the death of the seasonal campaign encouraging marketing individuals to spread that holiday cheer all year long: http://www.fastcocreate.com/1682005/the-death-of-the-seasonal-campaign-or-why-the-holidays-should-last-all-year-for-marketers

Campaigns have certainly changed, but they are by no means dead. The modern campaign has a specific theme and a context, while general branding does not. Think about raising money for an event or generating interest in a new techonology - that's a campaign. We build campaigns all the time that incorporate lead generation and lead nurturing. We start the awareness part of the campaign with blogs, social media, ads, press releases, etc. The difference is that the campaigns are targeted for a specific persona, and we use inbound marketing tactics to attract opted-in groups. Our themes might revolve around a topic or a set of pain points and start with education or discussion in a variety of channels. Then we nurture with more solution-specific content, and finally present opportunities for sales. We design our content to gradually move leads down the sales funnel and measure lead activity. You can think of this as an extended campaign, beyond the old email blast with botton-funnel content. By the way, this is what HubSpot enables. But it's still a campaign, and it still delivers the most qualified sales leads.

Why do start every article with a question? 
I want informed article that know the answer! 
 
Yes marketing campaigns are not dead, but they are much harder no that every man and his dog is trying to make some money on the internet. 
 
There is so much competition 

I agree entirely with the sentiment and disagree entirely with the conclusion. If a campaign is a systematic course of aggressive activities designed to achieve a specific objective, why should it die? And why can't an ongoing relationship with the customer be incorporated into it? Surely you're not suggesting that the Red Bull Space Jump, the launch video for the Dollar Shave Club or AT&T's "It Can Wait" campaign wouldn't work today. 
 
Further, a lot of campaigns are tied to time-bound activities, like going to see a movie while it's in theaters. People don't have a relationship with the production company; just the movie, which is only around for a couple months (and then when the DVD launches). 
 
The ongoing relationship needs to be factored into campaigns. The decision whether to launch a campaign needs to include consideration about its appropriateness in the digital/social era and based on long-term impact on relationships and engagement. But dead? 
 
I have to tell you, I'm sick to death of "something is dead" proclamations. They're almost never true.

Y'all (comments) are WAY too deep for me. I guess I subscribe to the KISS method. This article is dead on. LOVE it.

Huge competition in marketing at the moment and it's growing. Every UK town has now multiple companies offering the service. Marketing campaigns aren't dead. You just need to be create and think out of the box to drive qualified leads.

As usual, great post. I whish i could frame this article and show it to all people who can not see what changed in marketing. Yes it does take effort by creating great conten, like you do, but isn't that what makes great relations? Keep up the great work!

Think about the customer on the other end of a marketing campaign. Does he/she want more sale pitches or email? 
http://blog.jpkreiss.com/?p=1440

Hey Mike, 
 
Nice way to throw down the gauntlet! :-) 
 
Marketing campaigns are not dead. They're also not just outbound. The most effective ones are fully integrated using both inbound and outbound tactics. Ask ESPN, Coke and countless other megabrands. 
 
As Mike Lieberman, John McTigue and Shel Holz so aptly pointed out, campaigns have specific purposes and are time bound.  
 
They will also never die, you're right. They'll be around forever on the Internet. And that's good.  
 
When done right, they don't hurt the brand or alienate a brand's fans. 
 
Just because a campaign is an organized, time-bound approach doesn't negate its value to the customer or prospect. If campaigns were solely about the brand with nothing to do with the buyer persona, why are so many of them wildly successful? Of course, they're about generating sales, but then so is every inbound marketing tactic aimed at creating and deepening a customer relationship. 
 
Coming up with new themes isn't insulting or necessarily unwelcome. After awhile familiarity makes us blind and we take things for granted. Staying top of mind with customers is a challenge. So sometimes shaking it up a bit in the way you get someone's attention is appropriate.  
 
To put it another way, if you didn't bother to give your wife a birthday present on her birthday, but instead did things for her all throughout the year, do you really think she'd forgive and forget?  
 
Her birthday is a campaign in itself, isn't it? It's time bound, it's organized, it's thematic. Do you really think she'd find that campaign unwelcome? Do you really think the things you did for her all year will make up for ignoring or forgetting that special time? 
 
Why would you treat your customers any differently? :-) 

I'm not sure the campaign is dead. I just think that the campaign needs to be about the customer and not you (as MIke says).  
 
I think campaigns still have a place alongside a IM program that complement the overall strategy.  
 
A great recent example of this could be FIAT's Motherhood campaign.  
 
It still remains to be seen if it sells more cars but it is definitely light on selling cars and heavy on customer identification.  
 
see the FIAT campaign here - http://youtu.be/eNVde5HPhYo

I think you're getting tangled up in your shorts over terminology. A 'campaign' is a marketing operations term. No more, no less. The target audience rarely sees that word. If the campaign is done well, however, they see the promise of which you speak.  
 
Two different things entirely.

I needed this. "Stop advertising. Start marketing." Thank you!