---
title: "The Anxious Middle-Aged Marketer"
description: "At the 2019 New Year Marketing Course organized by New Distribution and Teacher Liu's Forum, many middle-aged marketers felt confused by the new marketing concepts. The confusion stems from differences in language systems, a disconnect between decision-makers and executors, and a shift in marketing's starting point from supply to demand."
author: "任小东"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2019-01-20"
language: "en"
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# The Anxious Middle-Aged Marketer

> At the 2019 New Year Marketing Course organized by New Distribution and Teacher Liu's Forum, many middle-aged marketers felt confused by the new marketing concepts. The confusion stems from differences in language systems, a disconnect between decision-makers and executors, and a shift in marketing's starting point from supply to demand.

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Last weekend, at the "2019 New Year Marketing Course" co-organized by New Distribution and Teacher Liu's Forum, something very interesting happened.
During breaks and at lunch and dinner, many middle-aged marketers told me, "We're confused!"
What's going on?
First, some background: The 2019 New Year Marketing Course featured deep sharing by corporate operators who have achieved success in practicing new marketing in China. The core focus was on strategic tactics for various marketing elements under the new marketing system (IP, scenarios, communities, digital marketing, experience, etc.). This was the first offline analysis of the overall new marketing system. There were two highlights: first, Jiang Xiaobai's VP Liu Peng shared the underlying logic; second, Three Squirrels' first employee, Shu Xiaofeng, shared the "person-store integration" franchise logic. Among the guest speakers were several post-90s executives and founders.
Back to the topic: The 200+ participants were mostly business owners and marketing executives, yet the phenomenon described at the beginning occurred: The course was exciting and brain-burning, but a bit confusing!
Why the confusion? The problems mainly appear at three levels:
> **First, traditional marketing and new marketing have different language and concept systems;**
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> **Second, there is a disconnect between marketing decision-makers and executors;**
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> **Third, the starting point of marketing has changed.**
These are the reasons for the participants' confusion, and also the root of traditional marketers' anxiety.
**01 Traditional Marketing vs. New Marketing: Different Language and Concept Systems**
Traditional marketers are familiar with terms like distribution, channel development, display, inventory pressure, franchising, merchant recruitment, advertising, payment collection, etc. New marketers, on the other hand, use terms like traffic, IP, community, scenario, link, touchpoint, digitalization, marketing technology, etc. According to Mr. Zhao Bo, founder of New Distribution, there are at least 40 key terms in new marketing.
In my view, the language system represents your way of understanding things. Teacher Bao Zheng explained in "The Essence of Marketing" that only by mastering an effective concept system can you engage in multi-dimensional deep thinking and get as close as possible to the essence of things.
Traditional marketers who haven't mastered the new marketing concept system are prone to "poisoning."
I have seen many traditional marketers doing new marketing for the sake of new marketing, mechanically copying and applying it. They haven't solved problems related to category and product, yet they insist on doing "community marketing" or "whole-network e-commerce." Is that possible?
Overall, building a cognitive system is based on the holistic thinking of "era—dimension—enterprise—logic—sequence—tools—methods." In simple terms, marketing practitioners must iteratively update their understanding of consumer changes, technology maturity, and business ecosystem changes. Through my recent two years of new marketing study tours and consulting, I've learned one thing: Effective new marketing methods must be built on the consistency of epistemology, methodology, and methods.
**02 Disconnect Between Marketing Decision-Makers and Executors**
Frankly, many marketing decision-makers in enterprises are older, and long-term internal work has formed path dependence and thinking inertia. Being in high positions for a long time creates a "comfort zone," and marketing decisions have formed a set of processes and systems that were correct in the past, such as the PDCA cycle. However, in the Internet era, marketing emphasizes "lean marketing" (borrowing from the concept of lean startup), requiring continuous iteration and upgrading.
So overall, marketing decision-makers tend to be conservative. But new marketing requires a younger, more internet-savvy team. The conservative style of decision-makers and the young executors of new marketing often leads to disconnects in communication and project advancement.
For example, in recent years, many "cloud management and cloud marketing" technologies have matured, but marketing decision-makers' understanding, mastery, and application of digital marketing technologies are insufficient or fragmented. ERP, OMS, TMS, WMS, mini-programs, micro-malls, SNS, cloud office, H5, SEO, SAO, one-code-one-item, etc., are still unfamiliar to many traditional marketers.
Being unfamiliar is not a problem; at least you should learn to play. If you can't play, let the young people play. As a decision-maker, you should dare to encourage young people to play. Playing is also a highly technical thing. This is a chaotic era. When new technologies emerge, there are dividends. It's better to play early, try, and combine with marketing than to wait until you fully understand it. For example, Jiang Xiaobai played with Weibo when it just became popular, and went all in on music festivals when they first showed signs.
When communicating with marketing decision-makers from large companies, I found that the most painful thing is that the bosses repeatedly hold meetings to research, discuss, and analyze the feasibility of executing certain matters. Before anything is done, all time is wasted on meetings.
I can't help but ask: Without "trial and error," how can there be "trial and success"?
**03 The Starting Point of Marketing Has Changed**
At the two-day marketing course, another interesting thing happened: At least three companies had no sales KPI, such as Uni-President, Lidu, and Jiang Xiaobai.
Why?
The most familiar scenario in traditional marketing is "inventory pressure." There's a rhyme: "Press year after year, it's fate; some years have it, some don't, thanks a lot." How much helplessness and bitterness is in it? Everyone knows it's fooling each other, pressing one to death. Lin Feng said that a certain industry has no qualified professional managers. Why? Because sales are all achieved through inventory pressure! How many near-expiry products are pressed out this way? How many distributors are pressed to death?
This logic is a typical supply-chain-driven demand chain, where capacity drives demand.
Why do the three companies above have no sales assessment meetings under the new marketing system? Because their starting point is not capacity but demand. The core is to do a lot of marketing actions around the demand chain, thereby driving the backend supply chain. The importance of Spring Festival inventory pressure in the liquor industry is self-evident, but Lidu's Commander Tang issued a notice: stop shipping at year-end.
Traditional marketing starts from supply logic, while new marketing starts from demand logic.
In summary, future marketing must always revolve around the demand chain. Combining IP, scenarios, communities, experience, and technology empowerment will unify the sky net (communication), ground net (offline distributors + retail), electric net (B2C + B2B), and people net (social e-commerce + M2C e-commerce). This creates a closed loop among new products, new models, new organizations, new communication, and new channels, building a "three-degree fan marketing" system of five new and full networks. It uses the demand chain to drive supply chain optimization, achieves organic integration of platform traffic and private domain traffic, and ultimately brings dual growth of brand stock and increment through full-domain traffic.
So, for middle-aged marketers who want to avoid anxiety, I have a prescription:
> **1. Master a new set of concepts and language system;**
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> **2. Actively try to use digital marketing technology to promote the connection between channels and users;**
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> **3. Use the demand chain to drive the supply chain, and grasp the balance between supply and demand.**
In this world, the only constant is change. To avoid confusion, practice new marketing!
New Distribution will hold the **2019 (5th) FMCG + Internet Conference** during the Chengdu Spring Sugar and Wine Fair from March 16 to 18. This conference will focus on the topic of **"Breakthrough"** and conduct in-depth discussions with many brand owners, supply chain service providers, distributors, and retailers.
Compared to previous conferences, this summit will be fully upgraded. In addition to the original topics of **channel innovation, city distribution logistics, and distributor transformation**, it will add multiple parallel forums on **new marketing cases, IP + FMCG empowerment, community group buying, and innovative retail**. Through three days of ten high-density, high-quality expert sharing sessions, we believe every brand owner and distributor can learn the latest business models, expert insights, and practical methods, finding new tools and methods for their own breakthrough in 2019 and returning to the track of high-speed growth.
******Conference Time: March 16-18, 2019** **Conference Venue: Longfeng Hall, Chengdu Longemont Hotel**
Conference Topics
**2019 5th FMCG + Internet Conference Topics**
Date | Time | Venue | Topic
3.16 | All day | Main Forum | Breakthrough - 2019 (5th) FMCG + Internet Conference
3.17 | Morning | Parallel Forum 1 | New Logistics, New City Distribution
Parallel Forum 2 | How Can Distributors Achieve Iterative Upgrades?
Afternoon | Parallel Forum 3 | IP Empowerment to Boost Brand Growth
Parallel Forum 4 | How Can Community Group Buying Reconstruct the Value Chain?
3.18 | Morning | Parallel Forum 1 | Retail Scenario Innovation
Parallel Forum 2 | New Product Sales Public Course
Afternoon | Parallel Forum 3 | Social E-commerce
Parallel Forum 4 | New Marketing Public Course
Registration Method
**Registration is now open. Long press the QR code below** or **click "Read Original" to register**. 66% off early bird tickets are limited to 200 and are selling fast...!**
Add the conference staff to register
Previous Conference Review
Click the links below to review the highlights of the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th FMCG + Internet Conferences:
**-END-**


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Contact: zhaobo258@gmail.com · +86 158 5481 7671