Jackie Danicki

Adriana addresses something that has irked me ever since agency types started discovering blogs: They expect blogs to act like the tired websites they and their clients have been using for years. (Let’s not even get into the hilarity of a self-described “media consultant” sending an email like that to someone like Adriana.) She blogs:

I used to (and still do now and then) receive emails with inquiries about what I do, which would be getting easier to answer if I didn’t keep evolving what I do to the point where I can never simply describe it. Sadly, the elevator pitch forever eludes me. What strikes me as odd about this email is that Tim presumes that my blog(s) are there for his effortless decision of whether his clients should be interested in this or not. They are there for me and, luckily, for those readers who enjoy the same stuff I do. It’s not a marketing channel - a brief look at what I blog about puts stop to any doubt about that! I guess Tim was looking for a shortcut, for the packaging of the new-fangled online stuff (I am assuming it’s social media that caught his attention) that would sell itself to him so he can then sell it to his clients. Well, nothing wrong with that if it works for you but it’s not how I work.

She also draws the important distinction between identity and brand. (Ugh, how long before agency types start using the made-up verb identitying?)

A blog gives you a chance to build your own identity, which is miles better than brand. It allows for a mix of trivial, serious, thoughtful and sometimes stupid.. just like the human being behind it. That is the authenticity that companies would like to infuse their brands with. Alas, it’s like with androids. Close but not quite. And often, not even close…

This makes it difficult when talking to traditional PR and marketing types about anything to do with the internet. I was speaking to one such person last week in London, someone who in short order admitted that he had never seen Facebook, had no idea what it was, and then said that it was obviously rubbish and only for pathetic people who like to air their dirty linen in public. If I’d had any interest in talking sense into him, I’d have had no idea how to start. (This is why I am not interested in working with the there’s-nothing-you-can-teach-me types. Overworked and underpaid, that.) Instead, I urged him to sign up and play around with it, if he could be compelled to slum it with us saddoes.

There is a more fundamental issue at play here, which is humanity. Most, if not all, marketing has had the humanity sucked out of it as a necessary element of being supposedly “professional”. Letting humanity shine through can make trad types distinctly uncomfortable. They’ve been conditioned to reject it, and to feel smug and superior for having done so (see above re airing dirty linen in public). To such people, it makes no sense why someone like me would have no qualms about saying on Facebook that I’ve split with my fiancé, or blogging here about being in AA. That’s truth, and the truth in their world is a dangerous thing. In my world, it is what it is, and I’ve no more urge to give you a bat to beat me with than I do to beat you with whatever truth you may openly share. I cannot imagine a happy life, full of growth, that has been expunged of all humanity, flaws and all. Can you?

If so, you might just be an old school marketer…

Filed under: Life