Marketing, The Parable of the Raft and Revolution

This post is by Michael Pollock, the original owner of Small Business Branding. Yaro Starak now owns and produces the latest content for this blog.

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Warning: Philosophical Moment Ahead . . .

Marketing was originally intended to connect a business to its customers. Yet, with its invasive flavor and clinical talk of demographics, targets, segments and USPs, it seems to have become the barrier between a business and it’s customers.

From The World’s Religions by Huston Smith (pg. 146):

‘"Would he be a clever man,’ the Buddha asked, ‘if out of gratitude for the raft that has carried him across the stream to safety he, having reached the other shore, should cling to it, take it on his back, and walk about with the weight of it? Would not the clever man be the one who left the raft, no longer of use to him, to the current of the stream and walked ahead without turning back to look at it? Is it not simply a tool to be cast away and forsaken once it has served the purpose for which it was made? In the same way the vehicle of [marketing] is to be cast away and forsaken once the other shore of Enlightenment has been attained?’"

Is it time to lighten the load? Leave marketing behind? Burn that mutha to the ground? It’s a trick question you know. It’s already happening. Gaze upon these facts:

Fact #1: People don’t want to be sold or marketed to. Really. They don’t. And they’ll buy all sorts of neat gadgets to keep marketers out of their life. Tivo. Caller ID. Spam filters. Pop-up blockers. iPods. How would you like to be a marketer trying to sell one of these products? A product designed to keep you OUT! Ironic, yes?

Marketers be damned!

No offense to my marketing friends and colleagues. I do love you all.

Fact #2: Small business folk don’t like to market/sell themselves. Ask them. They’ll tell ya. Further evidence is the proliferation of marketing books, mantras, methods and techniques designed to avoid having to market (in a traditional sense). Such as:

• Do What You Love, The Money Will Follow.
• Sell Yourself Without Selling Your Soul.
• Law of Attraction
• Un-Marketing
• Attraction Marketing

It’s safe to say we’d all be happy enough if we could just hang out the proverbial shingle and fight off all the business that came-a-knockin on our door. But alas, we’re pipe-dreamin. Not gonna happen.

So what to do?

Customers dislike marketing. Marketers dislike marketing . . .

Shhh. Can you hear the gentle rumblings of revolution becoming ever more apparent?

Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions:

"The proliferation of competing articulations,
the willingness to try anything, the expression of explicit discontent,
the recourse to philosophy and to debate over fundamentals, all these
are symptoms of a transition from normal to extraordinary research."

i.e. Revolution! Or is it evolution? Who knows, but the reality is the consumer is outrunning the marketer.

Drop your load.

Leave marketing behind.

Or get left behind.

Hitch a ride on the Hughtrain:

"It’s all about thriving in markets that are smarter and faster than you are. It’s all about being utterly f_cked if you don’t know what I’m talking about."

How to ketch up?

What to do?

My best advice:

1. Read this.
2. Live it.
3. Get to work.
4. Have fun.
5. Eat pizza.

Or get a job. Yuck!