As digital marketing becomes ever closer to traditional forms, marketers have suggested that 'digital' is no longer a necessary prefix. Now the Chief Technical Officer behind Barack Obama's re-election as United States president has said that digital terminology is often detrimental to larger, traditional audiences - and suggested fellow digital marketers change their strategy.
Speaking at the Direct Marketing Associations' Technology Summit in London, Harper Reed, CTO of Obama for America 2012, said:

“We need to drop the ‘e’ from ‘e-marketing’,” he said. “When me and my team joined the campaign we were seen as outsiders and we had to do a lot to dissolve the deficit between us and the regular campaigners.”


Reed suggested that terms such as "big data" were also unnecessary.

“Big data is just data… we take care of the ‘big’ part and campaigners can then go and use this intelligently,” he said.

“For instance, the people that went out on the streets didn’t have to knock on every door in a row (by using big data) they knew which exact doors to knock on where they’d have have a more successful contact.”


As digital marketing gradually seeps into a traditional marketer's arsenal, its specialism as 'digital' will become less of a bugbear and an accepted norm - particularly once digital jargon and terminology become less alien.