So I was waiting for this massive file copy to complete (I’m actually still waiting) and for the hell of it, I google “marketing blog”. Which, well, I just laughed in spite of myself (I’m actually still laughing). (I’ve now stoped laughing.) The first result is this: Shotgun Marketing BLOG.
Now let me just say that there are other bloggers I enjoy whom hail from generally the same geography as the author of Shotgun Marketing, Chris Houchens and so I was curious. Standard blogger template blog. Smattering of comments here and there.
But pow, the second post from the top struck me as perfect. Granted, this is no representative sample he’s talking about (18 people) but there is definitely a rat race of memetic novelty that happens among the wired crowd.
I doesn’t surprise me in the least that it takes a Kentucky blog to point that out. Good on you, Chris. I’m starting to think there needs to be a media vehicle dedicated to marketing from the midwestern/southen perspective. Just to hijack the point of his post and expand it, I think it’s interesting that those who presume to speak for what the futures should look like are largely from the coasts, and those for whom such futures are intended are everywhere. Hell, I’m even being (consiously) US-centric in this post.

John Hagel is giving rhetorical form to what I think are the most important issues at the confluence of business, economics, marketing and even epistemology. His “Unanswered Questions at Supernova 2007” post from a month ago is still consuming my thoughts even when I’m trying to do other things, like eat and sleep.

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The great minds in advertising have long championed the emotional sell. As in, a Mercedes SL is sold on its sex appeal, and not, say, the work of the metallurgists on the new alloy used in its body. As I’ve said myself elsewhere, 90%+ of consumers don’t give a damn about your flux capacitor.
I’ve noticed an interesting parallel in sales in general. It seems that with exceptions, even if your product or service is mediocre, as long as you have developed a compelling relationship with your client or prospect, you make the sale. In fact, the relationship clearly does far more than any attempt to extol the virtues of your offering. This isn’t really a revelation. Salespeople everywhere know it.
Perhaps this is why advertising has gotten away with shamelessly lying all these years. Perhaps this is why customer service almost universally sucks (I think, in part, because it is viewed as product support and not part of the relationship.) Perhaps this is why the U.S. Congress is more predisposed to pork than sound policy.

I don’t know why I haven’t posted something about this before. I find myself talking about this all the time. Here’s the gist:
Marketing is dead. You can be humans again.
No, really. Not the practice of taking things to market; I mean “marketing, the paradigm”. Marketing, of necessity, has been about dealing with customers at arm’s length. This is a byproduct of the industrial revolution. In order to pass the value of economies of scale to customers, companies had to be big. They had to talk to a lot of people. Since Gutenberg, the only tools available for—indeed the only ways to even think about—talking to a lot of people have been unidirectional. These univalent tools are the currency of marketing. They offer really no meaningful dialogue.

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We’re back on Broad Street. Morning engagements kept me from the first two presenters, and I’ve come into the middle of a presentation on “Entertainment.” The session is “curated” by Lee Maicon; Bald Guy, and Head of Planning at StrawberryFrog. The program doesn’t contain the names of the three panelists. One of the panelists is a particularly smart cat who is speaking about narrative and meaning. He (the smart dude) just walked us through some movie clips – one from Kurosawa’s “Ran”, and one from the Matrix. I haven’t been able to determine what exactly they’re trying to tell us, but I’ve only been here for a few minutes.

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