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  • Quit Thinking Like a Marketer

    Posted on June 15th, 2009 by Spike and currently 18 commenting.

    Seriously. It’s runing you. Well, at least sometimes it is. Because when we bring marketing into a relationship, we damage it. As we’ve said before (and we’ll say again), nobody WANTS to be marketed to.

    So I think it’s really, REALLY important to remember to take off our marketing hats and just be a person thinking about how to relate to other people in a honest, open, transparent way.

    I mean, would you show up at some random person’s house and scream on their doorstep that they should buy your stuff? Not likely.

    Watching the Twitter stream on a daily basis, I see link after link after link teaching us how to be better marketers: “Twitter dos and don’ts,” “How companies can use Facebook,” “Why your company shoud be using social media.” And while there are somes great points (among all the junk), I feel we are forgetting how to act as people. We, as marketers, are hyper-marketing to one another. And it’s too much.

    So take the marketing hat off. And guess what? You don’t even have to put your “people” hat on. Because you are one. A person. An individual. A customer. A fan. A human who has all kinds of relationships. And when you start thinking like that, all the marekting mumbo-jumbo will kick in and support it. But lead with the humaness. Lead with un-marketing. Because that’ll far outweigh and outlast the latest Twitter marketing topic. Every. Single. Time.

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  • Patrick

    Not sure I agree with this entirely. I do like to be marketed to sometimes. I want to get the email with targeted content and great deals from my favorite stores – that’s why I subscribe. I want to hear why their product is better – granted it is biased, but I am not dumb enough to take marketing copy for face value. Sometimes marketing is appreciated by the consumer – if done right.

  • http://www.flyovermarketing.com Kevin Behringer

    Spike:

    I completely agree with you. I have that same cartoon by Hugh on my desktop and it serves as a constant reminder.

    I think that when marketing is done right, it doesn’t look at all like marketing. I often like to compare proper marketing to proper evangelism (in a religious sense). Now, you don’t have to have any religious affiliation to get to where I’m coming from.

    When evangelism is done correctly, it’s done from a place of love for people and complete belief in what you are evangelizing. You are telling the other person about your religion, product, whatever it may be because you truly believe that it is best for them.

    The same goes for marketing.

    If we spent more time figuring out how to give people what is best for them and less figuring out how to convince them to buy our substandard products, we’d all be better off.

    Kevin

  • http://paulhancox.com Paul Hancox (.com)

    One word: YES!

    I don’t think marketers will be able to stop marketing… it’s a HABIT… but the best marketers find ways of doing it in such a way that it leaves people feeling all warm and fuzzy and wanting to find out more – not feeling that they’re watching a perpetual Twitfomercial.

    Just my 2.075 cents (including sales tax).

  • http://friendfeed.com/orangejack Rob Williams

    In general I agree. But there is a context where “marketing” needs to be “marketing”. I don’t have a relationship with a billboard nor do I want one, but it needs to speak quickly, relevantly, and call me to action. However, the more relational a communication medium is, the more is should be used that way. I think what we’re seeing is an abuse of marketing in communication channels. Twitter is so fast that sometimes there needs to be a fast call to action, but if that’s the dominant message, IMHO it’s being abused. If you set off to be relational, whatever medium you use needs to stay in context and consistent.

  • Ashley

    I couldn’t agree more. The thing is, there are so many media experts calling themselves experts and regurgitating everyone’s thoughts. I would love for those “experts” to stop linking me to articles on how to do it, and SHOW me how to do it.

    My feeds are nothing but RT’s of information on how to get your company to use Twitter. I may have clicked on those before, but now I just feel like I am being spammed. People are going to “market” no matter what, they just need to find a better way to do it.

  • http://atandylovell.blogspot.com Andy Lovell

    I couldn’t agree more with you. I unfollow people daily who only talk about the methods of using social media. I just feel like I’m being spammed instead of really getting to know someone. I’ve always believed that the best marketing techniquies are the ones the consumer doesn’t notice.

  • http://thebrandbuilder.wordpress.com olivier blanchard

    Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaameeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeen!

  • http://www.yovia.com Jalali Hartman

    Great article, and I agree 100%. Would love to learn more about what you do.

  • http://www.theviralgarden.com Mack Collier

    “As we’ve said before (and we’ll say again), nobody WANTS to be marketed to.”

    Agree with the post’s general idea, disagree with this specific point. This is the same point Doc Searls has been making for years, and I think he’s wrong too.

    I don’t think it’s that people don’t want to be marketed to, it’s that they don’t want to have their time wasted. If I am considering buying your product, or a similar one, I want to be marketed to. If I’m not in the market for your product/services and you are trying to sell them to me, you are wasting my time and irritating me. Hugh MacLeod had a great cartoon once about the folly of attempting to sell an asteroid to a dinosaur. It wastes your time, and pisses off the dinosaur.

    This is another reason why I love social media from the company’s point of view, because I think IF leveraged as a communication tool, it can GREATLY improve a company’s marketing by helping them better understand WHAT the customer is looking for and WHEN they are looking for it.

    With the greater understanding of the customer, the marketing becomes far more relevant, and worthwhile.

    Marketing isn’t the enemy here, bad marketing is. Unfortunately, there’s so much of the latter that it can be easy to confuse it for the former.

  • http://www.sonnygill.com Sonny Gill

    A-freaking-men.

    I can’t tell you how much I agree with this. We talk about a customer/people-driven market nowadays, but yet we fail to communicate with them as such. I had a recent post that talked about how companies provide for their customers based on either the company’s Convenience or the customers’ Experience. A great point that was mentioned in the comments by Beth Harte is that we as marketers continue to drive our customer relations that way, without the voice of a real person, which ironically is how we (when our people hat is on) would want to be ‘marketed’ to.

    Great post, Spike.

  • http://brainsonfire.com Spike

    I see your point, Mack. But people’s definitions of good marketing and bad marketing are subjective. I know I don’t like to be marketed TO or AT or whatever the case may be. As Geno often points out in prezos, “people by people first.” In a world where 77% of Americans trust companies less this year than they did last year, marketing ain’t cutting it. As least leading with marketing doesn’t work. We’ve seen it first-hand.

    Maybe it’s just semantics, what you’re calling good marketing, I’m calling good-relations. Marketing means too many things to too many people – and most of those are BAD impressions.

    Thanks for stopping by.

  • http://www.theviralgarden.com Mack Collier

    “I know I don’t like to be marketed TO or AT or whatever the case may be.”

    See I read that, and I hear ‘I don’t like to have my time wasted or hear messages I’m not in the mood for.’

    I think that puts you in the same boat with almost all of us.

    But go to ANY mall across the country at any time and all you see are people window shopping. People that have made a conscious choice to come to this place and interact with a business’ marketing.

    Yet take those same people that are in the mood to receive that particular marketing message at that particular time and interrupt their favorite TV show, and they’ll likely scream bloody hell. Because you are attempting to give them a marketing message on YOUR terms, not their’s.

    Again, I think we need to re-frame the conversation as being about IMPROVING marketing, not scrapping it. But I do think your heart is in the right place with this, as it always.

  • Matt

    To Mack’s point- when people want to be marketed to when considering a product- I totally agree (maybe)

    When I’m considering a product I’m more looking for education, not marketing although increasingly those two things are one in the same. Sometimes it’s done well and sometimes it drives me insane but I’ve found the best place to get that kind of info is from friends or other people interested in the same subject. I trust their opinion more than than any high on marketing low on info PR Communications.

  • http://www.mikecarrollphotography.com Mike Carroll

    It’s the freaking truth. Long ago I decided to work for the people that love me and it turns out that I love the people I work with. No marketing. Just great people hanging out trying to make beautiful art. Thanks for the post. You are right on.

    Mike

  • Curt

    This is a very enjoyable conversation. While I think the discussion of whether marketing is bad or just bad marketing is bad is a bit of an academic discussion, I think we could all agree that the vast majority of the ads and marketing messages delivered by companies are unwanted, insipid, meaningless interruptions into people’s lives. That makes it that much harder for the people who are really trying to establish a relationship of a higher order with the buyer.

    I have always looked at the communications part of marketing to be as much of a transaction between the brand and the buyer as the actual purchase of the product or service. The underlying message to the message recipient being, “Dear customer/prospect: If you will please grant me just a wee bit of your attention to my message for just a few seconds, I promise you that I will give you some information that you will find useful, interesting or entertaining…or maybe all of the above”. It’s a trade: you give me your attention, I will give you something of value in return. If you can get the reader, viewer, visitor to buy into that “trade” you have taken a big first step to “unmarketing” as has been noted above.

    The hard part of course is even getting that person take note of the “transaction” offer. It requires a relevant benefit statement or imagery that speaks to them as a person, not a wallet and promises value. Even with the best of intentions it’s not always achievable, but the sad thing is most marketing practitioners don’t even bother to try, or don’t even know enough that they should.

  • http://www.14four.com Ryan Moede

    Always good to have this reiterated, Spike. I used the same quote from Hugh in a presentation at work earlier, and just love its brutal honesty. Simply being a real human and trying to help folks out remains the best strategy.

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  • http://www.joecassara.com Joe Cassara

    This entry sounds like a marketing pitch.