For the longest time, the marketing challenge was: How do we sell the product we have? How do we come up with great positioning? How do we come up with a good message? How do we find the people that find our message and product/service relevant? Trying to answer this question has created an enormous marketing and advertising industry.

What if we reversed the paradigm?

What if we asked: How can we deliver a product/service that people want? We could stop the insane guessing game all of us are engaged in. We wouldn’t have to battle for the attention of people; they asked for our attention. That’s the basic idea of Vendor Relationship Management. I’ve written many times about VRM before.

What baffles me is that many people believe this is an utopian dream. “It’ll never happen.” They tend to forget, it’s already happening. Not in the marketing world yet but it happened to the publishing industry. The desire of people to get customized media whenever they want it lead to the sale of Newsweek for $1. And the sale of Huffington Post for $315 million. It changed the recording industry forever. Or, rather, wrecked it. People revolted against getting their information top-down. They wanted customization, filters and control. It was a quick transformation because Web 2.0 made publishing so easy for everyone.

What makes you think the same won’t happen to marketing and advertising?

Consider this:

• Population of India: around 1.2 billion people
• 81 million Internet users (Source for above two facts)
• Facebook: 21 million (as of July 2010) Twitter: 3.5 million (Source)
• Mobile user base: 270 million
• Mobile internet makes more than 50% of total internet usage and number of mobile phone users is more than 7 times higher than the number of people accessing internet. (Source)

Not sure how valid these numbers are since I heard many variations. Frankly, it doesn’t really matter. One thing is clear: It’s early. Many people told me that their digital marketing budget hovers around 2% of the overall marketing spend. 3G is not common yet.

In many ways, the environment resembles the US digital landscape around 2004-2005. That’s an amazing opportunity for Indian start-ups, media companies and agencies. They can learn from the mistakes we made in the US and Europe. The toolbox for brands is much bigger and better developed compared to 2005. There’s a vast library of case studies – successes and failures. There are many people that have been through the digital wars of the last 10 years than can help Indian marketers make their case for bigger budgets, for a seat at the table, for becoming the centerpiece of any digital marketing initiative and for transforming companies into social businesses.

These are exciting and often breathtaking times. While I encourage Indian marketers to get as much insights from their  European and American counterparts, I also urge everyone to create their own path.

“Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.”

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

I’ve met numerous innovators, bright minds and passionate people during Click Asia Summit 2011. The world better listen up. We’ll hear from them very soon.

(Above is the presentation I gave about Social CRM and VRM this morning.)

Ok, let’s get this out of the way: I was a big proponent of niche networks and thought they would become more important than Facebook/Twitter and all the other global platforms.

I was wrong.

I still believe niche networks are the future but there’s a major underlying problem.

It’s another thing we have to take care of.

The last few weeks I’ve experienced an amazing uptick in Quora participation, I get too many emails each and every day letting me know someone new is following me. There is Path. I love Goodreads. And, this endless list of hundreds of new platforms. Too much. Everybody wants me to contribute. Add content. Participate. While I work, have a family, share content on Facebook and Twitter.

Enough is enough.

We don’t need more platforms, sites, log-in forms and passwords. What we need is a better way to share our information. That was the idea behind Facebook Groups. But it went nowhere. Because nobody saw the benefit of investing a lot of time in developing and curating your own groups. More settings, more hassle, more hard work.

What we need is ownership of our own data

I want to build my own experience where I can share the favorite moments of my life just with my kid. A scrapbook of her fathers’ life. I want to be able to create a network on the fly that enables me to share very personal experiences with a limited amount of friends. It can be 4. It can 60. It’s up to me, not Path’s limitation of 50 friends. I want to share my running experiences with my running friends. My concert experiences with my concert friends. My wine experiences with my fellow winos. But, the last thing I want to do is to sign-up for another platform. Learn another UI. Remember new passwords.

There’s only one solution: data portability. As I’ve written in a few posts before, we need to own our own data. Control our own destiny. And  share this data on our terms. This will allow us to develop new, personal platforms that enable each one of us to build micro-networks of shared interests. Create my own destinations, completely independent from anyone.

Let’s face it: That’s a huge problem for Silicon Valley. They rather focus on incremental innovation. Put lipstick on the pig of data exploitation (Ahem, Foursquare, anyone) and continue to make money off all of our data. And they will continue to push the agenda of creating thin value by adding more features and ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs’.

But, that’s the past. The future lies in giving all of us control of our data. And release the real power of innovation.

This post appeared first on Jack Myers’ MediaBizBlogger site.

1. No more “This is the year of mobile.” 2010 was the year of mobile.

2. Privacy is not dead. People might not care that much about privacy. But Washington does. Just like the banks, we weren’t able to regulate ourselves or trim at least the excesses.

3. The noise is deafening. We need more signals.

4. It’s not about what you know. It’s about what you share.

5. Location at its current state is overhyped. Future location platforms/tools are under hyped.

6. Own your own domain. Don’t buy into the notion that being on Facebook is more important than developing your own content on your own platform.

7. Most people that recommend bright, shiny objects (Groupon, Foursquare, etc.) never used the platform/tools and just hype it because everybody else hypes it.

8. Media people are just like the rest of the population: They never click on banners.

9. Quora is powerful. Explore it.

10. Getting out of the advertising echo chamber is essential to understand the future of media and marketing.

11. Ever heard of VRM? You should. It’s just a Google query away.

12. I’m an idiot. That’s a perfect place to start from. When I’m open to the fact that there’s much to be learned. That my first answer is not the right answer. And, definitely not the best one.

13. You are what you consume. That goes for food, good wine and cheap blogs. Make sure to digest only the best. It will make you a better person.

13 ½. The Dodgers suck (Well, I knew that since they never delivered a World Series since I moved to Los Angeles in 1996)

13 ¾ Travel is under-rated. I knew that, too. But I wanted to put this on the list in case I’m ever tempted to say no to a trip.