Is Blogging Anti-marketing?

My mind is still filled with conversations I heard at the Blog Business Summit.  Some comments overflow with one of those periodic inward searches we all go through. My current (late) midlife crisis is this:  I spent half a lifetime as a marketing consultant.  I am now completing a book that a few people at BBS called anti-marketing.

I joke about being a "recovering publicist," and it usually gets a smile.  But I still believe in marketing as I perceived it to be when I first went into the field.  It was about relationships with people.  When Cluetrain came along and etched blogging's anthem of "Markets are conversations," my lightbulb was that you could not have a relationship without having a simple conversation and marketing had somehow or other lost sight of this self-evident truth.

So am I now a recovered sinner, evangelizing a new anti-business, anti-corporate Reformation Church? I stuggle with this. But Evelyn Rodriquez helped me resolve it with her BBS talk that should have been the keynote:

"You may be surprised that I chose a public marketplace as the metaphor for the blogosphere. With everything you might have heard you’d think the blogosphere is anti-business. And it’s scary for businesses.

That’s not exactly true. But, yes, it is a response to the depersonalization - the dehumanization - of commerce. "

Thanks Evelyn. It helps me resolve the issue.  I am pro-marketing.  I am pro-business. I am even pro-profits.  But I oppose corporate dehumaizanization.  When companies, marketers, lawyers, PR operatives and voice automation customer response systems get in the way of personal relationships, I oppose it.

This may be a boring blog.  But it was useful to me.  Thanks, Evelyn.

Comments

[Peter Flaschner]

Shel, wonderfully said.

[orcmid]

Great inquiry. Thanks for sharing it with us. Here's the foundation I keep returning to:

“Act so as to treat man, in your own person as well as in that of anyone else, always as an end, never merely as a means.”
-- Immanuel Kant, Metaphysical Foundations of Morals (1785).

The minute we start objectivising people, the mischief -- I was going to say evil but wrong conversation -- begins.

[Dave Taylor]

Hmmm... who says that the corporate influence on marketing has to be boring? I think you're making a big assumption - both you and Evelyn, actually - that individuals can be interesting, while groups and organizations cannot. I don't think I agree with that premise...

[shel Israel]

Dave,

I enjoyed meeting you at BBS and throwing candy at the guy on the stage with you. Neither Evelyn nor I said corporate influence on marketing had to be boring. What we both said is we didn't want it to be dehumanizing. I would add that it often has been.

[Evelyn Rodriguez]

Shel, Thanks. I don't think your book is anti-marketing. It's just shifted marketing to a two-way model.

I went through a bit of an existential crisis in regards to "marketing" myself last fall. I think participating in blogging over the long haul will do that to anyone in business. Moving from one-way media (and marketing is intimately tied to media) to a two-way model brings up a lot of new questions and, for me, a few doubts on "everything I learned about marketing".

Dave, I never said that being human (or humane) presupposes a single individual. A brand can have a personality, an attitude, its own mojo. I'm just looking over a list of "personality brands" in the book BuzzMarketing, by Mark Hughes.

"Meditate on a while on the brands that people passionately talk about, and you'll discover that almost all of them possess personality - a human quality. They resemble a corporation far less than they do a person. A person you would enjoy spending time with." - Mark Hughes

He contrasts HP with Apple. Or Breyer with Ben & Jerry's. Or uBid with eBay. Or Pontiac with the VW Beetle. And Microsoft with Google.

Funny, through blogging I myself feel that the tables have turned and Microsoft feels more real and personable to me than Google does.

[steven streight aka vaspers the grate]

Shel, I also spent most of my career life in marketing, in direct marketing, and advertising.

I agree with you that Real Altruistic Effective Marketing has always been conversational.

I also just unveiled, at my Vaspers the Grate blog, the real reason why we encourage businesses to blog:

so we can bitch and gripe and complain about their shoddy products and their deceptive practices.

Coaxing these naive businesses and CEOs into our trap is a lot of fun and I applaud you and Scoble and every marcom blogger who has contributed to this project via comments at this blog.

We are waiting for all business to blog, so we consumers can unleash our impeccable wrath at them.

I can't wait.

:^)

[Rich Webster]

Marketing is generally moving services and products to people. Blogging is a tool to that end. No problem.

Companies, particularly big ones, take the easy route. Mass marketing has been the easy route. If you can put a product on the market, and sell a ton of 'em, and make a lot of money... why deal with customers any more than necessary? Customers are a pain in the ass!

It is only when you have to overcome barriers... when you're the little guy, or your product line is controversial, or the dialog IS the business, that you are willing to invest the time and resources and emotion into facing the customer and having a dialog. Let's face it: customers are not all grateful, supportive, or even rational -- even when you have a great product and great service.

If you're a person who gets energy from dialog, and banter, and managing challenging people you may gravitate toward customer-facing roles in customer-centric business models (You're an extrovert). But there are enough introverts out there, who are drained or aggravated by customer interaction who should choose roles and businesses that allow them to be more isolated.

But the problems come when introverts try to do customer service... or extroverts are not given the power to do it well. Then hostility ensues and customer-antagonistic people and policies fill the customer-facing interfaces of the company... and failure follows.