There comes a time in every marketer’s career-hopefully towards the beginning-when they realize that at the end of the day, they spend their lives selling other people things. Books, apps, food, products, services, whatever. But it is what we do. We can, and do, couch this rather banal and mundane act in lofty words and expressions like storytelling, and engagement, and conversation, and connectivity. I’ve even had marketers tell me, when asked what it is they do, that they are “making the world a better place.” How quaint!
Of course, upon finding out that they run the marketing department for a company that sells the little rubber stoppers in the back of your toilet, one occasionally wonders, well, if sometimes we aren’t just selling shit.
Of course, sometimes we are just selling shit, coming up with fun, engaging ways to sell shit is an often evil necessity. But if selling shit every once in a while allows you to spend a larger portion of your time selling something you believe in or value, than that is the world we live in and we should be happy for it. I certainly am.
I am relatively new to marketing, having spent the bulk of my twenties either in jail or in finance (no real difference truth be told), and even though my business is coming up on the 2-year mark, and we are thriving, I feel lucky that the acknowledgement above, that I’m just a salesman, has occurred so early in my career. I love my job, I love my work. No matter the project or the client, I always get something valuable out of my work. It’s just that value sometimes derives AFTER I’ve admitted to myself “Hey, you’ve got a widget to move son, so let’s start moving those widgets.”
So How Is Digital Marketing All About Love?
Because once we acknowledge that we are just marketers, that our work is really just about getting someone else’s work into the public sphere for consumption, we can actually do a better job. And it is precisely because we love ourselves, and the people we imagine to be our client’s customers, that we start the arduous task of getting creative in order to sell them something. You can’t not have love for your customers. The most successful marketers are ones that believe in love, that love their customers, because it is precisely that love that will teach them how to market those people. Marketing breaks down in the face of love.
Which is why some of the most memorable marketing campaigns are all about love…Remember this one?
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Sorry, don’t have an actual website, so my Tumblr account will simply have to do! Liked this article very much and you’re right; the most successful campaigns do appeal to the emotions (BTW, liked the Google campaign you referenced). De Beers discovered this when marketing diamonds (exploiting poor Ian Fleming with ‘a diamond is forever’) worldwide and in Japan. The Japanese never gave their betrothed engagement rings until De Beers told them to. True story.
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Katja
Thanks for taking the time to comment. Actually…as you have quickly figured out, my mother is in the diamond business therefore I am well read up on the DeBeers diamond mythology. Its a great success for marketing in general to so alter human and consuerm behavior.
And your tumblr account is divine!
Zac
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