Hi Caesar, I like your analogy that "a marketer without a strategy is like an army going to war without a map". My concern is that I still see a lot of marketers who are focused on implementing a little piece of this puzzle, without an understanding of how it all fits together - or how their piece impacts the flow of the whole. I guess where I'm landing is that marketers today need to have the ability to understand the overall map and make relevant connections between the different threads of potential customer journeys. While 'marketers' are certainly not 'one person' - there are many different roles within the profession, I suspect the strategic ability to contribute to the 'connecting of the dots' is something that is becoming increasingly required for ALL marketers.

I just read some info about the FutureGov Congress http://www.futuregov.asia/events/futuregov-congress-australia-2011/ which demonstrates the Australian government is at least moving in the direction of citizen engagement and Open Goverment. Looks promising! From: http://www.katelundy.com.au/2011/05/12/senator-kate-lundy-announced-futuregov-congress-coming-to-canberra/ : "As part of our suite of policies, we a very strong statement, the Declaration of Open Government, and I think it’s probably worth reminder everybody here today the nature of that statement. "The Australian Government now declares that, in order to promote greater participation in Australia’s democracy, it is committed to open government based on a culture of engagement, built on better access to and use of government held information, and sustained by the innovative use of technology. It goes on to say: "Citizen collaboration in policy and service delivery design will enhance the processes of government and improve the outcomes sought. Collaboration with citizens is to be enabled and encouraged. Agencies are to reduce barriers to online engagement, undertake social networking, crowd sourcing and online collaboration projects and support online engagement by employees, in accordance with the Australian Public Service Commission Guidelines. "The possibilities for open government depend on the innovative use of new internet-based technologies. Agencies are to develop policies that support employee-initiated, innovative Government 2.0-based proposals."

What an articulate article - right on in my humble opinion! I don't believe this is only about social. Integrated plans need to be designed from the outside-in, based on insight into the target audience / constiuency. By starting with the target, relevant content and communication vehicles can be selected to form part of an integrated plan. This would, as you articulated, involve embracing the audience/constituency, engaging in a meaningful way (experts connecting with experts 'peer-to-peer' as well as more tradition one-to-many marketing communications being managed in a more integrated manner across silos). Ideally, by listening first, the content would be so highly relevant and valuable that the target is energized to share the messages / content / agenda on the organisation's behalf. Iteration of plans in short test & learn cycles would play an important role here too. My question is around how to encourage a large enterprise to develop an appetite for this large scale transformation effort to self-analyse and redesign the organization to make this all possible? Keen to hear thoughts on this.