California Dreaming: Challenges in Infrastructure and development

While the focus of this blog is primarily b2b marketing and more specifically how it relates to industrial machinery marketing, I would like to digress a little in this post as I am presently in California meeting with our sales team and touring the surrounding industrial areas of Fresno, San Diego and Riverside on a photo shoot focused on our excellent construction products.  Having not been to California from sometime several impressions are what I would like to highlight.  Namely, the heightend erosion and decay of the great highways and byways that seem to be busting at the seams with traffic (read users) in strark contrast to the limited trucking and industrial activity usually seen in past visits.
It appears the need for construction equipment should be at an all time high and that an infrastructural boom would be in the offing due the real and present issues with traffic, but this of course is not the case.  In fact sales to contractors, and construction companies are at near unseen low, right across many competitor brands and suppliers who in past years lead their perspective markets.  Many have speculated as to the root causes from the Democratic debt loads to the mismanagement of key State funds earmarked for roads and infrastructural development over a decade or so in California.  From my limited outsider perspective, there needs to be a chicken before the egg approach to revitalization of public roads and bridges.  Namely, communities need to remember how their roads came into being in the first place.  Development and social pressure for services were driven by core business needs.  Put another way the exact opposite of  'build it and they will come'. Rather they are here and we need to build it approach.  This fact saddly is lost on many municipalities that like households need to decide if shiny Xmas lights and fancy trimming will take priority over more mundane but fundamental needs such as rent/mortages and utility bills.  No one or government can spend their way out of debt but at some point the reality that key assets such as roads and bridges are necessary and ignoring their repair and upgrade will only end badly.

Global Shift in Wealth by 2016: What it means for Business Marketers

According to all major economic think tanks, the economies of China and possibly India are on track to surpass that of the U.S. by 2016.  With the demographic profile of India  as young and educatted middle class combined with English, we will see a growing shift in Wealth in Asia to unprecedented levels since the middle ages.  In fact, there are more billionaires in India than anywhere else except the U.S. with the return of many high level US trained executives to Asia in recent years and the rise of Asia focused MBA programs what will the Marketing world of 2016 possibly look like.
Frankly, with the emergence of web/social media  and soon the semantic web (think a learning web where your choices determine the brands, media and news channels that will be presented to you - as a personal segment of one) the world will be a truly, flat and wired world in lines with Thomas Friedman's well read series of books on the subject.  But I would argue, that with the increased  customization and specialization of information combined with the mega trends towards mobile and real time augmented tools, think a hyper version of google maps, comsumers will more and more fall into electonic tribes with marketing barriers that could be as real as geography and language were just a few decades earlier.
   I believe, as B2B marketers we must prepare to evolve with social media, cross promotional platforms that will strength our messaging, almost akin to a chorus strengthens the power and richness of the human voice.  There will be a continued evolvement of both media platforms and tools but the need to design and implement robust messaging that will engage real people where and when they could realistically evaluate, purchase and use our valued products or service offerings is essential.  The greatest danger I see for the future is complaceny, either in testing new media outlets and tools or ensuring  we are collaborating in the success of those who are using or potentially could use are products and services.  With this in mind the world of 2016 will be Asia focused, young, wired and multifaceted in both economic, cultural and technological needs, but it will be very familiar if we begin today to embrace the possibilities in terms of added consumer input, competitive intelligence and market responsiveness.