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.
