recycle the same old pap?
This morning I clicked on an article by an alleged marketing guru on how to be more effective on Facebook. I’m always interested in enhancing my skills. Silly me. After reading the article, I couldn’t help thinking that a spot-on headline would have been: “Skip these five so-called ‘pointers’ unless you are new to the arcane process of thinking.”
To be fair, the article in question is but one in a parade of banal embarrassments-in-writing purporting to advise the advertising industry which in fact any moron without so much as an iota of professional experience could have come up with (and probably already has) on his or her own. Where is the stuff to broaden my horizons, add to my skill set, challenge my thinking?
Don’t give me the line about needing to hear and re-hear the basics until we master them or about how fundamentals bear repeating. I am not talking about basics or fundamentals, but mindless platitudes presented as insights and foisted on working professionals.
I suspect two reasons as to why alleged gurus recycle such pap ad nauseam ...
Reason 1: It’s not usual for people to prefer validation to broadened horizons and challenged thinking. We’d rather someone tell us we’re on the right track than have someone suggest how we might do things better. After all, the latter implies that we’d have to do things differently, and who wants to concede needing to change? (Not that marketers have exclusive rights to the don’t-tell-me-I-have-to-change frame of mind. It is human nature.)
Reason 2: When I visit with alleged marketing gurus, I am oft surprised at how little substance any of them really have to offer in the first place. Why should they? The market doesn’t demand it. We The Market elevate them to guru status precisely because they make us comfortable. (See Reason 1.)
In business as in religion, if you want your market to follow you, don’t tell them they must change. Tell them they’re doing just fine, not to change a thing, and that those who doubt them just don’t get it.
—Steve Cuno