“Caesar’s wife must always be above suspicion” is an ancient, much repeated and deeply misunderstood phrase.
Today, it invokes the power of Rome’s famous emperor. However, at the time, it was uttered by an ambitious young Julius Caesar in order to sweep an adulterous scandal under the carpet, lest it hinder his upward rise.
Posterity is often like that. Stories of incredible success, told in retrospect, always carry an air of inevitability. So it is not surprising that we sanitize the stories of heroes, which often contain privation, hardship and humiliation. I, however, like the full versions, warts and all. They might not be as pleasant, but they are far more instructive.
Marketing has changed a lot over the years. What used to be a field of dreams has become a battlefield in which massive armories of technology and data are brought to bear in a neverending quest for domination.
In other words it has become, supposedly, a serious enterprise.
However, confusion reigns. One of the main sources of disarray is a misunderstanding of marketing’s relation to numbers, math and science. Marketing, of course, is none of these, but a business function, and to be practiced seriously, it needs to be treated as one.
Everybody loves a hot young tech company. They arrive as little bundles of joy, filled with excitement. They brim over with potential and we can imagine that one day they will rule the world.
As they grow older, they lose some of their charm. Their products seem less unique and amazing. We start seeing mistakes, even failures and become disappointed. How could it happen? Who’s to blame?
Ah! It must be bureaucracy! Those kafkaesque, small minded suits throwing wrenches into the gears of innovation!
It’s easy to blame bureaucrats. People who fill out forms for a living seem deserving of our ire. After all, they can’t code, sing or dance. However, the notion that they bring down tech companies is not only a myth, it’s a cop out.
An American jurist once famously remarked that, although he couldn’t define pornography, he knows it when he sees it. In other words, porn looks like porn, seedy and crass (or so I’ve heard). Nobody would mistake it for anything else.
We often hear about misunderstood artists, but not misunderstood pornographers, which is probably one reason why pornography is so profitable (or so I’ve heard).
A starving artist? Sure. A starving pornographer? Never! It’s a shame that more products aren’t like pornography. All too often, they confuse us and they usually do it in a very foolish way. They want to show us how clever they are by making us think about how to use it. What could be more thoughtless?
It feels good to be trendy. You can be sure that you’ll have a lot of company. And that’s exactly the problem. It’s easy to go wrong when everybody around you thinks it’s right.
Watch at a movie from the 80’s. See how ridiculous people looked? We all thought we were pretty cool back then. And the recent financial crises? Nobody thought they could lose money in real estate!
All trends fail at some point because they sow the seeds of their own demise. Here’s a quick guide to how it happens. Learn the signs and don’t be a sucker!
When I was a kid, I loved Tony the Tiger. He told me that his Frosted Flakes were “Grrrrreat!” and I believed him, getting up early so that I could scarf some down before my brothers would eat them all.
The character was created by Leo Burnett, a man and an agency famous for positioning products through iconic characters, such as Tony, the Jolly Green Giant and The Marlboro man.
Other famous campaigns, such as Volkswagen’s Think Small (DDB) and Nike’s “Just Do It” (Wieden and Kennedy), defined brands in the marketplace. While the principles that led to those legendary campaigns have lost none of their power, they are no longer sufficient. Marketing creativity is breaking out of old confines and making new rules.
With all the endless babble about paywalls, “free” content, social media and other things, it’s easy to lose sight of the true values and cost of journalism. It is a profession with character, a soul and a purpose that is essential to a well functioning society.
Running a media business can be a lot of fun. You get to work with talented people. It can be exciting and glamorous, interesting and cerebral. It also has its downsides. Inevitably, someone – an advertiser, government official or even an everyday consumer – doesn’t like what you publish and calls you screaming for blood
When that happens, it’s your job to protect the product. Unfortunately, as this story will show, some people take that responsibility more seriously than others.
A while back, I wrote a post about false gurus, those with loud voices and negligible expertise who babble on about things they don’t begin to understand. They are sometimes nefarious, sometimes well meaning, but always a waste of time.
Yet just as bad (and sometimes worse) are the elegant gurus. They work with gold-plated advisories and consult for blue chip clients. They have real acumen and even true insights to offer, but then chose to deal in hyperbole and sophistry rather than sound analysis.
Are you smart? Really? How smart? Socrates famously said that “the only true knowledge lies in knowing that you know nothing.”
More recently, G. H. Hardy wrote that “For any serious purpose, intelligence is a very minor gift.” Einstein himself said that his gift for “fantasy” was more important than his ability to retain facts.
Those are some pretty smart guys, so they would know.
That some of history’s most brilliant people hold such opinions about what it means to be smart should give the rest of us pause. To paraphrase Forrest Gump, “smart is as smart does.” So the question is, what does smart do?
Does your business need Social Media? Really? What for?
Unfortunately, that’s a question that rarely gets asked. Social media has become so trendy that many people rush in without really thinking about what they want to achieve. Just as you wouldn’t select your tools before you know what kind of house you want to build, you shouldn’t undertake any marketing action without clear objectives.
There are, however, good reasons to incorporate social networks (and social media) into your marketing program. Here are four:
Or install manually
Copy and paste the following Google tag code onto every page of your website, immediately after the element. Don’t add more than one Google tag to each page.
