Heads Up Asses? Me Thinks So.

This just out in a report from Epsilon:

Marketing Execs Aren’t Sold on Social Nets.

The story is here and pasted below.

Not only are social networking site users less than thrilled about seeing ads,  it turns out that  corporate chief marketing officers share that lack of interest, judging from the results of a survey released yesterday.

Conducted late last month for Epsilon by GfK Roper Public Affairs and Media, the online poll quizzed CMOs of consumer and business-to-business brands with revenues ranging from $250 million to $10 billion. More than half of the 180 respondents said they’re “not too interested” (22 percent) or “not interested at all” (33 percent) in using Facebook and MySpace as part of their marketing strategy.

“Internet forums (52 percent), webcasts and podcasts (47 percent), e-mail (47 percent), blogs (37 percent) and webinars (52 percent) outscored Facebook and MySpace (35 percent) in terms of being social media elements that marketing executives said they are very interested or somewhat interested in using,” according to Epsilon’s summary of the findings.

The same survey found 70 percent of the marketing executives expecting to decrease their ad expenditures in 2009. Among those expecting reductions in their budgets, e-mail marketing is the area in which they’re least likely to make cuts.

Part of me says “good” to that. Go ahead and ignore social media and let the rest of us who get it gain the foothold these clowns are about to pass it up.

Social media isn’t just about spending money on advertising in a new channel. It’s about embracing the tools and using them to help build brands. If these CMOs are passing up the opportunity to examine and test all aspects of marketing in a new channel, they’re just asleep at the wheel.

I wonder if this is the same pack of CMOs who questioned the value of spending time and money building a website back in the late 90s and believed that no one would ever pay for connection speeds faster than dial-up.