Terms in marketing have a war-like connotation and there are reasons for that:
History
Terms
Business is better achieved not by warfare but by diplomatic tactics.
Ever been to a shindig and the popular, Nickelback-lovin’ rock ‘n roller dude walks in and tries to fit in with the cool kids, only to make himself look like a fool because his fashion is about 2 years old and probably got his coach to negotiate his grades?
Yeah, that guy.
I really don’t mean to sound pretentious, but hear me out.
Southwest Airlines isn’t cool because it bought its way there. They didn’t pay for a report to tell them “X percent of people enjoy listening to safety rules before a flight in a lighthearted fashion.” At least I hope they didn’t.
And, being on Twitter and Facebook doesn’t make them cool. Even if you coached your client on how to effectively use these tools, they could still hopelessly fail.
Why?
Because you can’t buy luv (I sure am giving SWA a lot of attention here, but I’m a huge fan). Who wants statistics written about what is cool? I’d rather tell my clients how to enable “cool” and then let them figure it out themselves.
Here are some of my tips:
And, no, I wasn’t beat up by jocks growing up (in case you’re wondering).
One thing that really upsets me is the way marketers view digital media. It really does. I don’t mean to go to negative-town, but I really need to explain it to those who just don’t get it.
If Philo T. Farnsworth , the inventor of television, were alive today, he would tell you about all of the hell David Sarnoff put him through.
I’ll let you research their story, but the point is, television and radio were made to be biased against interaction or control, whether intentional or not. Television without a remote control created an atmosphere where one would almost forcefully watch through commercial after commercial after commercial.
Unless one had a child (the hacker) at the set at all times to help you change the channel if an advertisement came on (trust me, this was my childhood job), your bottom line was set to unfortunately rely on corporate entertainment.
OK, so what’s done is done.
Interaction occurs. People can now fast-forward through those ads and forget about them entirely.
And, if product placement occurs, there are surely more places to find better entertainment for free (or, for goodness sake, play outside, even an outsider can do this as he/she now has easier access to find other outsiders to go to, let’s say, a renaissance faire).
The point is, I’m upset that marketers think that digital media is for them. It wasn’t set up to be. Sarnoff isn’t alive.
They can be part of the medium. But, marketing the medium will surely hit the path of least resistance.
In order to understand how we got here, we’ve got to understand where we’ve been.
While Generation X was the Slacker Generation, I’ve deemed ours the Hacker Generation
Below is a algebraic representation of how the controllers (the elite) beckoned new media capabilities to the masses.
Put simply, if all you could do is believe, then the controller (the God[s]), as it was dogmatically accepted, could only hear about the good, the bad, and the ugly happening below.
Once priests/monks knew how to read, then all the masses could do is listen. And so on…
Social control as a function of media by Douglas Rushkoff
So, now we are at a point where we can (and have) become the programmers.
The Hacker Generation
With open APIs abundant in several applications, this is the new wave of business and entrepreneurship, on a highly localized level.
With a cooperative, collaborative model set to benefit applications and its community, business has changed from a top-down, scarce (closed) model to an bottom-up, open source (abundant) one. And, it benefits the whole.
This doesn’t just apply to online applications, offline hacking can occur too.
My advice to small businesses: allow all of your workers to learn every single part of your business (yes, even your janitors). But, the only way to achieve this is if there is an open incentive for them to do this (you can figure this out on your own). You want all of your employees to care about your organization.
Ideas are abundant, don’t let them be scarce.
It usually goes like this:
X&Y brand is bringing you the latest [insert contest or promotion here] for you to express your individualism and creativity.
I’ve been forced to write this false sense of a term in a press release before, even after I persistently fought against using it, especially because of the demographic.
First introduced by political economist Adam Smith, he argued the economy should be based on greed without much regard “to any overarching scheme of goodness or justice.”
Example of why Adam Smith was wrong
Rushkoff, on the Media Squat, even went so far as to say that Game Theory, and, in particular, the Prisoner’s Dilemma, is a misnomer and has been proven wrong. Human beings, he argues, are set apart by rational thought.
The digital age and its influence on business just goes to show that collaboration trumps this false sense of competition (and scarcity).
Nothing of me is original. I am the combined effort of everybody I’ve ever known. – Chuck Palahniuk
Success is only achieved by the purpose.
Matt Reyes, founder of the Department of Influence, is a DC-based marketer who enjoys music, design, history, & Texan gravitas. You are currently browsing the archives for the Change category.
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