Make Marketing History

The views of a marketing deviant.

Thursday, July 16, 2009

Common Sense Isn't.


In recent weeks, I've blogged less frequently than before because I felt it had all been said and that surely everybody knows this stuff.

But tonight, I heard industry practitioners speaking of clients worried about losing control of their messaging, obsessed with identifying those mythical influencers and, best of all, of the opinion that "the internet was only for people who love us or hate us - when we should surely be focussing on the indifferent masses."

Perhaps your competitors don't know half as much as you think they do. Perhaps that gives you a great opportunity to steal a march on them.

6 Comments:

Blogger Robert said...

The thing is, common sense isn't that common at all in marketingland.

Or banking.

2:51 AM, July 17, 2009  
Blogger Unknown said...

Ah! I had exactly the same thought - it has all been said before - we all know this stuff etc etc. Turns out not to be the case my friend. There is a whole new generation of folks that know very little. But it is also true of marketing folks - they can be like goldfish. When I left a certain company recently - those left in planning embarked on a whole new project to find out about an audience segment that we had just won a major pitch for. It was the same folks with the same knowledge on the same audience segment - they just sort of forgot.

So to your point - I am sure there are lots of agencies with planners and client facing folks that just don't get it, but they can regurgitate it when its put infront of them but don't actually process and think about the information and how it can be applied to add value to meetings and client business.

I can feel a post coming on and I suggest that you do too John. I was talking with Mr. Howard and we looked back at the really great stuff that was written back in 05/06 and early 07 - inspirational and amazingly intelligent and useful stuff.

Since then the 'pretensai' have come along and spouted mostly ill-informed half-thoughts about important marketing issues that then equally ill-informed planning types and 'techno-geeks' who couldn't rub 2 circles together to get a Venn diagram - perpetuate and celebrate.

C'mon John - let's put some stuff back out there that means something and stop the rot. I am sure its what @IamMarcusBrown had in mind but got slightly distracted recently.

2:49 AM, July 18, 2009  
Anonymous Paul Stallard said...

I agree with Rob - it never ceases to amase me how people who I admire also lack commen sense when it comes to online marketing.

1:07 PM, July 20, 2009  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I feel your pain. Unfortunately crowds aren't always that wise. This is worth reading and to steal a quote

"A general fact of social life: much of the time groups of people end up thinking and doing things that group members would never think or do on their own"

http://www.spectator.co.uk/the-magazine/features/3731248/to-become-an-extremist-hang-around-with-people-you-agree-with.thtml

7:37 PM, July 20, 2009  
Anonymous neilperkin said...

This is so true. I've recently found myself vaguely repeating myself which I swore I'd never do, but have ended up doing it almost out of frustration.

12:42 PM, July 28, 2009  
Anonymous charlie gower said...

some useless thoughts on common sense for you:
http://charliegower.typepad.com/tantramar/2009/02/common-sense.html

1:03 PM, July 28, 2009  

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