It's All About Me

Read somewhere that one of the "rules" for blogging is that the blog isn't something to be about the writer, but about the audience. Sounds like good marketing advice. Problem is that this blog is about me! So, I guess I will simply recognize the rule and decide to ignore it. Problem solved.

This got me thinking. For all of the new techie stuff, marketing hasn't changed. Marketeer wants to manipulate the reader/viewer to take an action. The action is generally in the best interest of the marketeer. Go figure, it's a "money thing". Yes, it should benefit the "buyer"... blah, blah, blah. Point is, either I am too old and stubborn to recognize some new dynamic or, maybe just maybe, things haven't really changed all that much since Marketing 101 way "back in the day".

Which leads me to me real point. Met an amazingly cool PR firm today that works a lot in the social media and environmental sustainability space. Way cool company. Way cool "space" (when did people quit having offices and start having "space"?). On to the point. These folks just plain "get it". They recognize that technology is the tool, not the whole point. Marketeers be warned (especially agencies), there are actually people out there that focus on the client's needs and then show them the tools that are now available to accomplish those needs/goals.

Final point: I have zero stinkin idea what any of this "new stuff" is. I don't understand twitter, friendfeed, mashable, etc. I can barely spell RSS. I wish I did, but I don't and I am too damn old to start figuring it all out! Now, find a way for me to work from my boat... then you have something. Show me where to get those cool flip flops with a built in bottle opener in the sole, then you have something. Otherwise, I am going off the grid and leaving the "cool stuff" up to the next generation. But, "next generation", just remember, I am the guy that pays you, so you better figure out a way to market to me in terms that are relevant to me... in ways that are "all about me". In other words, we are right back to square one in marketing - and we never really left.