Maybe the bad weather here in Toronto is getting to me, but marketing pple are starting to REALLY get on my nerves.
I know, let's take an old tactic, like say, a microsite for the press on a product launch. Let's rename is something cool - um something with the word social in it. I know, how about a social media press release!
Next thing you know, they take that new name, write books, blog posts. Maybe add some cool diagrams and develop new paradigms and go off to digital marketing conferences and become kings of the world.
Give me a break.
The Web has always been social. Email, IM. Biggest apps ever.
The tactic of creating interactive experiences for the media to launch products has existed since around 1997.
Community sites have been around since before the Netscape browser.
What has changed is decentralization and the power of the edge economy. What has changed is that we are all now media. Actually there are a lot of things that have changed except maybe marketers who continue to play the rename game and end up making a schwack load of dough in the process.
(this rant was for some reason was inspired by Mathew's post, "PR Industry: Still grasping for a clue)"
Friday, 11 April 2008
Let's Play The Game "Rename That Marketing Tactic"
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And the reason for all this (besides the obvious, that marketing people in general are, basically, sadly derivative and unimaginative): we are experiencing the nexus between identity constructed through reference to hierarchies of authority, and identity collaboratively constructed through individually controlled artefacts interacting with diverse, interconnected contexts in complex ways.
Yeah, you guessed it - I don't twitter. :)
Less convoluted version: we in the fogey generation have been socialized to construct our identity with respect to institutions of authority, be they religious, educational, corporate, or even class/status authority - this last one gives us individuals' identification with brand. In the UCaPP world, identity is collaboratively constructed based on stuff I put "out there" and the ways in which people to whom I'm connected in social networks make sense of that stuff, based on their own contexts. Thus, my identity is largely constructed by what people read on my blog, for example. Since contemporary marketing is all about construction of identity (both of the company and of the consumer) they are trying their darnedest to cross over from the fogey world to the UCaPP world. Unfortunately, almost all marketers are fogeys, and few are sufficiently insightful to really understand what's going on.
As it turns out, these sorts of ideas are the focus of my current repertoire of talks that I've been doing this year in a variety of venues.
You know I"m dying to read your thesis Mark.
The interesting thing is that clients are looking to the consultants and the book writers to help them make sense of what's going on.
However, as Peter says it, Bull shit baffles brains , what they mostly get is the continued creation of new language not to educate, but to confuse.
If we remain "the experts" then we can continue to sell tactics that clients may not necessarily need.
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