Ian M Rountree

Copywriter, Project Manager, Digital Marketing

  • Copywriting
    • Content Marketing
    • SEO
  • About
  • Contact

What is Marketing in 2010? (or) How Meta Can You Get-a?

January 30, 2010 by Ian 5 Comments

I’m still trying to figure this out. I don’t have a marketing background, a technology background, or even a business background. I have a sales background – I’ve been dealing with people, confronting their hangups and counselling them through difficult decisions for most of my life. Solving problems for people is a part of my make-up, a core piece of who I am. When people ask what I do at work, it’s difficult for me to admit I fall into the category of a retailer, or even a salesperson. Retailing and sales are related to marketing, certainly, but it’s more of a kissing cousins relationship than a fraternal twins relationship. The perception, however, is the same of all three; high pressure pitches, manufacturing concept whenever we’re not begging for coerced permission.

That’s not my process. I’m a facilitator. I build a bank of information, contacts and products and then I get people what they need.

So when I see companies purporting to do the same thing I do (whether in the same space or not), but failing terribly at communicating this, I get a bit frustrated. We all get a little freakedout by businesses behaving badly, even people pretending to be businesses, and its worse when I see it locally. Part of this, I’m aware, comes form my lack of understanding of the space – sales is as different from retailing as it is from marketing, after all, and with so many self-declaring experts around, it’s growing increasingly hard to tell who’s legitimate and who’s not.

Is it positioning, or is it posturing?

The first important question to ask if you’re trying to figure out anything about how someone’s acting is whether they’ve got something real backing them or not. Snake oil salesmen talk a certain way, dyed in the wool producers speak an entirely different language. Part of my job as a facilitator is to learn to speak every language there is, and communicate my bank of options to whomever I speak with in a way that matches their understanding and perspective. Still, it gets really easy to tell when someone wants a massive television because they think it’s going to be some kind of social proof for them, or when another person wants the same television because they sit ten feet back and have poor eye sight.

What does this have to do with marketing?

As I understand it, marketing is sales on a macro level. For decades, it’s been a disconnected medium, broadcast and wait. Over the last few years, the gap between people and their brands has been shrinking at an increasing pace, and the process is leaving a lot of brands frightened, stiffening like deer in the headlights of an oncoming locomotive. People are getting bigger than their own skins, and brands are getting smaller as their mass media efforts take more and more of a back seat roll in the sales and business growth cycle. Will these channels ever disappear? Not likely. But we’re certainly seeing other avenues become far more measurable, effective, and ubiquitous. Why? Because everyone’s participating. People are more interested when they can serve themselves.

Remaining Meta Together.

There’s a power to celebrity that’s universally enticing. We all like to escape, to believe we’re kings and queens. And when we all have the ability to move so far beyond facilities served by others – Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and so on – and build our own platforms, our own brands, and do our own marketing… Well, that’s even more exciting than following celebrity, it’s becoming celebrity. Creating these self-legitimizing personal platforms creates a kind of power for us we could never have had before, and it’s one that corporations aren’t yet equipped to process.

Because they can’t process it, the ball is in the court of anyone who can build that personal brand, and get just savvy enough to fake importance without looking too much like they’re posturing. It’s mostly a bluff. But it’s creating a brilliant, and very different skill set for those willing to explore the space with real curiosity, genuine interest, and an eye toward how the new world of ubiquitous, instant, and most interestingly thorough information exchange.

The place of passion in the land of liars.

As part of a promotion for The Art of Marketing, Mitch Joel ran a contest on his blog, asking for people to define marketing in 2010. Naturally, I tried to weigh in – but on further inspection, I think my answer was a little lacking. It felt like posturing, more than positioning. Mitch was asking about passion, drive, and innovation. Listening in on new channels, and deciphering their value is nothing new. There’s no innovation there. Is it necessary? Yes, absolutely. But it’s also done. Listening at the point of need is an integral part of what any business should be doing. Defining and recognizing new channels is nothing more than adding new sets of ears.

What is Marketing in 2010?

The short answer? I have no idea. So far, it doesn’t seem much different than marketing in 2009. Or sales in 2009, or 2008. What’s different isn’t part of what I’m doing yet. It’s nothing I can, in my daily work, do differently to increase my utility to others, their utility to each other, or my ability to grow the business I’m involved in.

The long answer? A lot more complicated. Whatever marketing in 2010 is, I’d love to find out. Because with all this attention and excitement going into it, I’m sure curious.

Wouldn’t you be?

Filed Under: Reviews Tagged With: art of marketing, be a facilitator, embarassingly meta, liars, market-forces, marketing, marketing in 2010, mitch joel, passion, retail, sales

The Mental Disadvantage of Intentional Deviance

December 27, 2009 by Ian 5 Comments

Boxing day was a bust. We spent much of the day trying to figure out why, and we came up with a few answers. It’s come down to either: (a) everyone knows Boxing Day sales are incredible, but also doesn’t want to be part of the crush; or (b) everyone went to the big box stores; or (c) everyone shopped online.

It’s perfectly possible Amazon and other e-tailers could have had awesome one-day-only deals. Even though there’s so much fuss over Cyber Monday, Boxing Day is a universally recognized deal-grab that any business dealing with the public would be stupid to not take advantage of.  This is altogether likely, and I don’t have the stats, but I don’t think I could be as frustrated with that; it’s not because online shopping is killing retail, it’s because ecommerce is an entirely different industry selling a similar product. It’s like comparing journalism to copywriting – same product, worlds apart.

Well, sure, lots of people go to big box stores for the great deals – doorcrashers have been a way of life for them for years, whereas my chain is only three years into the Great Door Crasher trend. But one of my colleagues figured that one box store has, maybe, 13 of a given TV which means a hundred people will go and 87% miss out. We, however, have four locations for each of their single monoliths, and if we have four TVs per location, it means there’s actually a much MUCH larger percentage chance you’ll get what you want from us. But if a TV goes Doorcrasher in a boutique, does it make a sale?

We ended up asking a couple of people, by the end of the day. And it turns out most people know – deeply believe – that boxing day in the malls will be idiotically busy, and try to avoid it unless absolutely necessary. One customer even called it Pugilist Day – needless to say, we lost our hats laughing.

But is this the case?

There’s a gap, where everyone avoids an action because “everyone else” will be doing it. People avoid entrepreneurship because it’s already done. Shoppers avoid the busy days, because they want to avoid the crowds more than they want to take advantage of the deals. As the actions and their consequences scale upwards, the result of this intentional deviance gets bigger, and eventually we see what we had yesterday: malls with no one in them on the biggest shopping day of the year.

I almost wish I was at the shop today to see if everyone who avoided coming in yesterday showed up today; that’s the other result. If everyone takes the road less travelled, you still end up in the middle of the pack. But of course, you can’t see this because the pack surrounds you, and for all you know the other road holds ten times the number of people.

Being different just like everyone else – isn’t always a good idea.

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: boxing day, commentary, deconstruction, deviance, drawbacks, economics, market-forces, media, the-web, work

Mergers (Marvel gets owned by Disney)

August 31, 2009 by Ian Leave a Comment

So Disney just bought Marvel Comics for $4 billion in cash and shares, and I’ve spent the last five hours reading variations on “My Childhood, It’s Ruined” on every social network site I visit.

People. This may not be as bad as it looks.

Think about some of the recent mergers you’ve heard of. I know, there are a lot of bad examples, and part of this comes from bad press. Now, I want to turn your attention to some other, lesser-known acquisitions that actuall turned out fairly well.

HP gobbled up Compaq and now what we have is a fairly mixed bag of different looking computers for different prices that all do the same things. HP was decent before, and Compaq had its issues, so I’d say Compaq won out by sticking around as a sub-brand.

Rogers purchased Fido a while ago. NO ONE noticed. And I mean no one. The companies are still being run as separate in every respect, with separate branding and focus, and outside of having access to each others’ networks, there’s been no major changes.

And then you have Acer acquiring eMachines and Gateway over the past while. Four years ago, Acer computers sucked. They were horrible. But with Gateway’s great design paradigm, eMachines’ expertise, and Acer’s awesome screens, the company has started to close in on its nearest competitor, Dell. That’s saying something.

So which kind of merger will Marvel and Disney be? As I’ve just had pointed out to me, Disney is good at making things generic, which would kill Marvel and its innovative spirit and presense. However, considering Disney’s waning market force, its own change of direction lately… Well, for all we know, Marvel may end up getting the lion’s share, using Disney’s marketing abilities, its ability to franchise just about anything from nothing – well, we may just be seeing the rebirth of Marvel and Disney both as a totally new media empire.

But who’s to know? Until one or both start making moves powered by the faculties of the other company, we won’t actually see any loss or benefit from this, outside of Disney shelling Four Billion dollars back into the economy through the buy.

Wait and see. It’s the only way to go, at this point. I, for one, hope Marvel wins its own strong place without destroying Disney – more the way Rogers/Fido did, because I feel that’s the best strategy for diverse, sustainable business.

Filed Under: Marketing Strategy Tagged With: business choices, disney, market-forces, marvel

Categories

  • Announcements
    • Event Notices
  • Blog
  • Communication
  • Content Strategy
  • Marketing Strategy
  • Personal
  • Reviews
  • Social Media
  • Technology

Archive

  • January 2016
  • June 2015
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • January 2012
  • December 2011
  • November 2011
  • September 2011
  • August 2011
  • July 2011
  • June 2011
  • May 2011
  • April 2011
  • March 2011
  • February 2011
  • January 2011
  • December 2010
  • November 2010
  • October 2010
  • September 2010
  • August 2010
  • July 2010
  • June 2010
  • May 2010
  • April 2010
  • March 2010
  • February 2010
  • January 2010
  • December 2009
  • November 2009
  • October 2009
  • September 2009
  • August 2009
  • July 2009
  • June 2009
  • May 2009
  • April 2009
  • March 2009
  • November 2008
  • October 2008
  • July 2008
  • February 2004
  • Copywriting
  • Blog
  • Reading Lists
  • Colophon

© Copyright 2023 Ian M Rountree · All Rights Reserved