Ritson: Marketers should stop bullshitting about 5G and do some marketing
5G was this year’s Thing to Talk About at Cannes, taking the mantle from blockchain last year, AI, VR, 3D printing and all the other ‘game changing’ shiny stuff of Cannes past. Mark Ritson has some news for marketers: China is already working on 6G, and he’s invented 9G (Marketing Week).
Key points:
- Instead of the latest bauble, perhaps marketers at Cannes and other events should talk about “customers, brands and effectiveness,” says Ritson. “About real marketing rather than bullshit tech.”
- In any case, China is already working on 6G. Su Xin, head of 5G technology for the Chinese government, says it will be “the G to end all G”.
- Ritson has therefore invented 9G using an old modem and some tinfoil
- “9G is going to fix space travel, healthcare, parking meters and match all the socks in your top drawer” – Ritson
- “I freely admit that my device is a massive load of bollocks but so is 99% of the discussion about 5G that is currently going on among marketers”.
- “These bullshit discussions get completely in the way of the actual, very real challenges of marketing that no one seems interested in concentrating on. Bollocks to 5G.”
Mark Ritson wasn’t even at Cannes but puts this year’s ‘game changer’ back in its box with his latest invention: 9G.
Ritson, the Marmite of marketing, isn’t to everyone’s taste. But his skewering of Cannes and the industry’s obsession with the next shiny thing is pinpoint. Each year ushers in the next iteration of the Dunning-Kruger effect, which hypothesises that people without knowledge of a particular subject have a tendency to overestimate their knowledge and abilities. Most marketers on the speaking circuit are experts in their field (though Ritson makes another exception for Gary Vaynerchuk). It's hard to disagree that sharing that expertise to solve some pretty pressing problems might offer paying delegates better value.
