Sometimes it feels like those in the b2b marketing sector have been in a hurry to write obituaries.
Cold calling is dead.
Direct mail is dead.
TV is dead.
Events are dead.
Physical is dead.
Human interruption is dead.
Digital only. Algorithm first. Everything else is noise.
I have even heard opening keynotes at conferences say it. Much to the chagrin of a couple of outbound calling agencies I know.
It was exactly this funeral march for “old” marketing that pushed me to write a song about it, 'Dead Men Dialling'. Because every time someone declares something dead in this industry, it usually means they have stopped looking closely enough to notice it still working.
It is a cheap and myopic thing for anyone in our profession to claim. The logic behind declaring everything that is not fashionable obsolete is flawed. We confused what is modern with what actually works. And we forgot a basic truth about how markets behave.
When something becomes easy, abundant, and cheap to produce, it loses impact. When something becomes rarer and requires real effort, it starts to stand out.
Marketing is not a software problem, it is an attention problem. And people notice what feels different, not what is easiest to generate.
Look at the environment we have created.
Inbox zero is a fantasy.
LinkedIn is an echo chamber of recycled thinking and recycled language.
Programmatic ads chase each other down the page.
AI has turned “good enough” into a factory setting.
Scale is no longer the edge. Being indistinguishable is the risk.
And in a market full of identical digital output, anything that feels physical, human, or effortful suddenly cuts through. And that’s what all b2b marketers should be aiming for. To cut through.
That is why the so-called dead tactics are not dead at all. They are being used by the people who refuse to run their entire go to market through the same pipes as everyone else.
A physical letter on a desk now gets more attention than another unread email.
A real phone call lands differently in a world of automation.
A proper conversation at an event carries more weight than another video meeting.
A TV ad that builds memory does more than a million forgettable impressions.
Not because these things are nostalgic. Because they are now unusual.
I’ve seen proof of this in real life:
A Sales Development Rep who finally got a meeting because they sent something physical to get the attention of a prospect that had long ignored their other outreach attempts.
A CMO who admitted their best lead of the quarter came from a chance conversation at a trade show.
A founder who said the deal that mattered most started with a phone call and then dinner, not an email campaign.
For years we were told that efficiency was everything. That friction was the enemy. That faster and cheaper automatically meant better.
But meaning does not come from speed, credibility does not come from automation and trust does not come from convenience.
Digital did not kill the old channels. But digital has made itself ordinary.
Performance marketing has become a tax, not an advantage. It often feels like selling pounds for pennies.
Reach is everywhere. Distinctiveness is not.
Click through rates barely move the needle.
Algorithms change. Costs rise. Margins get squeezed.
Meanwhile, brand, memory, physical presence, and human contact are quietly becoming the real sources of advantage again.
Not because they are new but because they are harder to implement without effort.
Hard to automate.
Hard to scale without care.
Hard to do badly without being noticed.
What is really happening is simple.
Everything is now fast, cheap, and easy to ignore. So the things that stand out are the ones that feel like someone actually bothered.
A real voice on the phone feels different because most contact is templated. A physical object feels different because everything else lives on a screen. Being in the same room feels different because so much interaction has become weightless.
Not because these things are romantic or retro. Because they require effort. And effort is still the clearest signal of intent we have.
The mistake was thinking progress meant replacement.
It does not. It means rebalancing. Markets are human systems, not just data systems. And humans do not respond to abundance. They respond to contrast.
So the so-called dead tactics are not coming back because they were misunderstood.
They are resurfacing because the environment has changed.
They called it a graveyard. What it really was, was a misdiagnosis.
The old guard did not die.
They were waiting for the moment when being human became the competitive advantage again.