• Unlearning.

    Posted on July 26th, 2011 by and currently 5 commenting.


    Self portrait created by my son at age six.

    Years ago, in another life it almost seems, my young family was visiting with some friends. I’ve since lost touch with them, but these were really interesting people. They were a young family like mine, but they had nine kids and lived on a farm. They had chickens and grew things. And they had a tenth kid on the way.

    There was a creek on their farm, which was in the middle of nowhere in South Carolina. It was hot June day. Things were roasting over fires and we were roasting too.

    My son was about 5 or 6 at the time and he came running up to me and said, “Mama can I get in the creek?”

    I looked around, surveying the safety of it all and asked him who was down by the creek. One of the nine, (soon to be ten) kids about the same age as my son looked at me with his hands on his hips, his bare chest held high and said, “I ain’t never seen a boy who had to ask his Mama if he could get in the creek on a hot day.”

    I remember laughing out loud at that very honest observation. Somewhere along the way my son learned to ask, and his little friend had never been taught that creeks could be something your mom might not want you to just jump in on hot day.

    Marketers have had to do a whole lot of quick “unlearning” these last few years as the rules of traditional marketing have been undone and rearranged.

    We have had to learn to stop tossing clever messages at our customers in the hopes that something might stick. We’ve learned how to be more human in our reactions. And that we don’t have magic wands when it comes to connecting people in a tech savvy social world.

    It’s hard work. All that unlearning.

    I actually told a friend the other night that there is no such thing as marketing any more. It’s a different world and we deserve a new word. We have to jump in the creek without asking these days, even if we were brought up with other notions in our heads.

    What have you “unlearned” recently that has made you better at creating relationships, both online and face to face with your customers?

  • http://profiles.google.com/rcoffee Randy Coffee

    Now I’m no expert, but in my environment it certainly seems that traditional marketing has always been (and sometimes still is) yelling your message at clients until they succumb to your wishes.

    What I’m learning is that may be effective to some degree, but relationships, and engagement create customers for life.

    I’m a runner, and I go through shoes pretty often. I’m also cheap, and I get ads online and offline constantly selling inexpensive shoes. But I buy local from Fleet Feet. Why? Because they know my name. I could spend $5 less on shoes at Academy or Zappos, but I don’t have a relationship…there is no engagement.

    The sooner we marketers stop yelling and start remembering people’s names the better off we’ll be.

  • Jack Uldrich

    Wonderful post! A while back I wrote on 10 things that marketers should consider unlearning: http://www.unlearning101.com/fuhgetaboutit_the_art_of_/2009/12/10-thing.html

    All the best,

    Jack@unlearning101.com

  • Robbin

    Love these. Especially the last one about being uncomfortable in your own skin! Thanks for sharing.

  • http://www.bradentalbot.com Braden Talbot

    Unlearning is as important as learning–if not more important. Unlearning means clearing out the mental junk we’ve accumulated, made as an image, and projected onto the world. Clearing this just makes way for open-mindedness.

  • Sally

    Great post. Refreshing and a good reminder.