+ How cut throat the industry is.
+ The negative stigma attached to marketers in general.
+ That we can “add value” with “creativity” and make a product more expensive.
+ That we interrupt everyone, all the time.
+ That everyone thinks they’re a marketer.
+ That every marketer thinks they’re a social media expert.
+ That there are so many wankers in the industry.
+ That there’s such a rivalry between the traditional media people and new media people.
+ That marketers think they can segment consumers based on the year of their birth.
+ That we sell products that kill people.
+ How everything seems to be about winning awards. Or how many awards you’ve won. Or how agencies make ads specifically for awards.
But fuck I can’t wait to be a part of it.
Zac and Russel. I’ll probably photoshop Todd in later.
I was at an event on Wednesday night where Russel Howcroft from GPYR, although perhaps more commonly known from The Gruen Transfer, spoke.
Talking to a bunch of students about to graduate and looking for jobs, he made one particular point that I thought was quite interesting. Now I’m paraphrasing here but a small part of his speech went something like this…
“Sometimes you need to forget the basics. Ignore what ever it was you were taught in first year marketing at university, specifically the definition about what marketing actually is. This definition completely ignores the concept of “Build it and they will come” and overlooks the idea of making art for the sake of it”.
What a personal branding crisis! This means I can no longer play up the whole “young naive teenage blogger who doesn’t know what he’s talking about” card. I suppose “young naive twenty something blogger who doesn’t know what he’s talking about” works too. Although it just doesn’t have the same ring to it.
Last night myself, Lucio and Simon were sharing a beer or two (actually Simon was drinking wine but let’s not complicate things). We decided that it wouldn’t be a bad idea to do it maybe a couple times a year, and with more people. So here are the deets…
New Media Beers Melbourne
Friday 25th September / 7.00pm
The Cabinet (we’ve reserved the balcony facing Swanson Street)
11 Rainbow Alley (left off Little Collins Street heading to Russel Street)
Should be a good night. And if it was anything like last night it may end with a late night Maccas run and Lucio ordering “anything with bacon please”. If you think you might make it drop me a comment.
+ After a few months you have a light bulb moment and Twitter just makes sense.
+ The correct terminology is “you tweeted” not “you twittered”.
And after saying these things on the Gen Y Marketing Podcast last week, the boys characterised them into two categories…
+ A moment where outsiders are “spoken to”, from a “higher being”, where they then become insiders.
+ Language loading, where commonplace words such as “tweet” are given new meanings unique to that culture.
They followed this by saying these two features are some of the common characteristics of a cult.
Dear Tim Addington and Matt Porter,I am subscribed to both your magazines, B&T and AdNews respectively. And I have a problem, I sincerely hope you can help.
But before we get started; Timbo, I must admit I was disappointed you failed to reply to my last letter. Matt, I hope you see this as an opportunity to one up yourself on your rival by dropping a comment below. And just so you don’t feel left out Kylie Flavell, I have no complains about Marketing Magazine today.
Anyway bros, included in my subscription to your magazines, I receive a daily email updating me on what’s what in the industry. This is how the daily routine usually goes…
4.41pm B&T Daily Update arrives in my Inbox.
4.42pm AdNews Daily Update arrives in my Inbox.
4.43pm I delete both without reading either of them.If I’m really interested in something from that day I will normally choose AdNews over B&T for reasons already discussed on this blog but the problem is you both practically send out the exact same thing. Let’s take a look at the two editions side by side from yesterday…
Not only is nearly every article on the same topic but some of them have almost the exact same headlines. There are more similarities in the “bonus material” too. How exactly is it that you guys differentiate from one another?Because if you don’t find a way before my subscription runs out, I’m probably going to ditch one or both of you. Just giving you the heads up.
Zac Martin
Anyway, the response was mixed. People who I would consider better friends in real life were, for the most part, the ones who picked up on it most. Others, who I’d only met after joining Facebook and those who I didn’t know extremely well, didn’t recognise the change. On more than a few occasions, these people even commented using my name as Zach.
And perhaps the best story, someone attempted to email me at zach[email protected]. Classic.
Just another example of how heavily we rely on Facebook.
But it turns out some ridiculously small figure like only 5% of people actually know what RSS is, let alone actually use a Reader. So three months ago, I turned on email subscriptions. And in that time I’ve had 15 people subscribe using that service. May not seem like many, but that’s 15 people who I wouldn’t have had otherwise. Not bad for less than five minutes work setting it up.
And the best part is, everything is much more customisable with email subscribers, and you can actually see the list of people subscribed.
So some advice, bloggers of young and old, turn on your email subscription service.
