We live in an age of economic duress, an age of excess-engendered skepticism about consumption. The quick diffusion of this skepticism, empowered by the Internet, has made the matter particularly pressing.
So it’s no surprise that the world of business -- specifically in the realms of advertising, branding, and marketing -- has to once again ennoble the concept of sincerity, which is to say, they have to simply be sincere and do work that is bounded by and radiates honesty.
Whether on the Web or elsewhere, only sincerity can overcome skepticism; that’s not a particularly inspiring or provocative notion. The problem, however, is that evocation of sincerity is the stuff of turgidity and fakery, because we as a society have destroyed it through misuse and imprecision. In fact, the serpent has swallowed its own tail -- references to one’s own sincerity appear to be driven by unction and inauthenticity.
That can no longer be the case.
Promises, whether of services, products, experiences, ideas, have to be kept. Banal products that promise breakthroughs and transformation; excruciatingly cumbersome Internet experiences that promise “ease” and “balance” (how many times have you spent 30 minutes filling a shopping cart online only to find that you get an error when you try and “check out”?); and base ideas that exist under false cover of “liberation” have no place in a world of sincere marketing.
The single biggest mistake marketers make, whether in traditional media or on the Web, is the attempt to “sell” falsehoods with clever word-play. The second biggest mistake is that they attempt to sell “full identities” and not micro-identities. The third biggest mistake is that they market in a fragmented, inconsistent way, depending on the medium they use.
The secret is that all of these mistakes are the same mistake. They all spring from the same fountainhead of illegitimacy that has gotten us into this spiral.
Take mistake one -- false promises. Don’t say things that you don’t believe to be true about what you are trying to sell. People won’t be fooled in this age of skepticism. They will not buy, and if they do and they are disappointed, the “value” of what they “lost” or the value of what they can “regain” if they press their case looms large enough to warrant action, which includes everything from asking for refunds, rejecting entire brands, or even blogging about bad experiences.
Mistake two, the issue of “full identities,” is a branch of the same poisonous tree. No product or service or experience can ever approximate the fullness of being human. So don’t sell a treadmill or a self-help book with the idea that it might “transform life.” It might help transform (generally a bad word to use, but humor me) your weight or transform your view of “time-management,” but it will not transform your “life.” Be sincere by marketing to micro-identities and following rule one above.
Mistake three is the mistake of context. Websites and magazines, and other “venues” for messages, don’t think, emote, or persuade. They are vectors for messages -- people think, emote, and persuade.
So tell the same thing to everyone. Be sincere.
I sincerely believe what I have written.
— Romi Mahajan is Chief Marketing Officer of Ascentium Corporation. Formerly with Microsoft, he is a frequent speaker and writer on technology and media.
Except for Thrive, apparently. I actually know some founders that do use objective metrics, and the folks over at Google in the product testing area actually manage some decent metric stuff that they feed over to the marketing guys. Perhaps we can figure out a test plan for IE...I'll trade you guys my expertise in return for continued invitations to places that have free Diet Coke. *grins*
So I'm with you on outright lying, but as you point out, there is a lot of leeway in between there that I think is interesting. As always, when I think about these things, I start thinking about the space I work in and I can certainly think of several companies that I feel like make claims that they can't back up, either in terms of what the product actually does or how those features actually help people save money.
Maybe it is the scientist in me, but I want to know that marketing claims are backed up by metrics that prove them. For example, when I say at Thrive that we help young people save money, it is because I can actually look at objective metrics (how much money they had, how much money they have now, rate of savings change before Thrive and now) and see it happening. It bothers me when companies seem to be promising that their product will do things that no data exists to verify.
I know, I know...
With regard to my opinion about the blog: you know me well enough to know what I think. *smiles*
"what is the difference between "created appeal" and "genuine appeal"?"
A good marketer (or, as I like to say, marketeer) knows that you shouldn't polish a turd. So if you have a rubbish product, really nothing you can do is going to help it. And, in fact, all you will do is damage your long term brand and rep with your customers.
Now, within that integrity zone there is an awful lot of room for maneuver, but really marketing shouldn't be a lie. And I think people know this.
I really, really hated this blog, BTW. I know how polite you are but I suspect ypou thought it was pretentious bollocks too.
Insultant: Marketing may be about making something more appealing, but I'd be interested in your concept of what the reference point is. That is, more appealing than what...it's actual utility value? That is, what is the difference between "created appeal" and "genuine appeal"?
As an example, I am sitting here with a box of Nerds. You don't really have to market Nerds, because they are delicious. I don't like them because you've created a reason for me to like them, I like them because they are sweet and taste good. And yes, I know that the packaging matters, the color, the flavor, etc etc. but a good 95% of the appeal of Nerds is intrinsic to their Nerd-properties.
And some of the marketing around a product like Nerds highlights that. That is, if we say "Nerds taste damn good", it is not a lie, I'm not making them more attractive than they actually are, I am simply advertising what is an objective truth about Nerds: they taste good. If you sell me a computer by telling me it does XYZ, and it actually does XYZ, are you considering that marketing?
I'm going to leave aside that the blog itself didn't exactly ring my bell, but I will at least say: I think there is room for marketing in a sincere way, where you simply raise awareness about the positives and negatives of a product, honestly, without inflating or overpromising. Like saying Thrive was founded to help young people become more financially healthy. It is good, it brings us traffic, and it is entirely sincere: in marketing, I am not making it appear more attractive than it actually is, but certainly more attractive than nothing.
Websites and magazines, and other “venues” for messages, don’t think, emote, or persuade. They are vectors for messages -- people think, emote, and persuade.
Turning the table:
The only reason advertising is useless is becuase you had no part in why it is in front of you or what it is going to say to you. If you were given the chance to design the experience you wanted, advertising would be that much more capable of not deflating your experience. Advertising has the ability to enhance your experience, unlike having no advertising, but only if you are allowed to think, emote, and persuade the advertiser about what you want to see.
I absolutely agree with you. Advertisement and all its metamorphoses and applications tightly occupied media and Internet. 40 % of TV potential is simple waste of time, which could be used in educational purposes, for example. And now we are surprised, they don’t younger generations want to read books?The question is simple; they make conclusions about the world from TV advertisement Internet. They make up their mind on the base of half-true half-false clips they watch every day and it is not hard to forecast the outcome of it.
Professionals who make it have been using psychological aspect of human cognition throughout centuries. They show goods and service like the only possible destination of happiness and joy. But people, should also become more rationalistic and filter the information they receive. The problem here is that we do not want to watch it, but we have nothing to do as it interrupts our favorite movie or show every 5 minutes or appears in junk emails and favorite websites. There are channels without it, like HBO, but it is not so inexpensive. So, we pay twice: for access to movies and for absence of advertising.
We are entering new technological era now. We are using transillumination instead of invasive X-ray, we are constructing robots and develop pure math. We want prepeare today's world for further generations and one more way to achieve this goal is to reduce amount of advertising shown on TV and in the Internet.
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M2M: Rise of the Machines? Not Yet David Weldon In the 1970 science fiction thriller Colossus: The Forbin Project, two giant supercomputers from the United States and Soviet Union secretly join forces to take control of the collective nuclear might of the two countries. In the film, the two machines discover each other's existence, communicate back-and-forth, share their collective data, and cut their human creators out of the process. It is the ultimate example of machine-to-machine communications, or M2M. CLICK FOR MORE
M2M: Rise of the Machines? Not Yet David Weldon In the 1970 science fiction thriller Colossus: The Forbin Project, two giant supercomputers from the United States and Soviet Union secretly join forces to take control of the collective nuclear might of the two countries. In the film, the two machines discover each other's existence, communicate back-and-forth, share their collective data, and cut their human creators out of the process. It is the ultimate example of machine-to-machine communications, or M2M. CLICK FOR MORE
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