There are so many articles, podcasts and chats lately
proclaiming the “Death of Marketing!” or “Marketing is Dead!” Rest assured, my
marketing cohorts, marketing is very much alive and in my opinion, enjoying
quite a resurgence, if not a bit of rebranding.
Have you ever hated the name your parents gave you? I did. I
grew up as an only child and looked for community and comradery and a large
group to belong to for much of my childhood. Admittedly, this carried into many
of my early adult years as well, as I struggled to find my identity. I eagerly
searched through magnets and souvenirs to find something with my name on it to
proudly take home with me, often to no avail. “Lucy is an old lady name!” I’d complain
loudly and often. Then there was my last name. Two long names hyphenated into
one. It never fit into Scantron boxes and I rarely could find myself on lists,
never knowing “which last name” I was filed under, as if it were indeed two
more names, rather than the one long one that it is. I yearned to change it,
later on in life taking the initials of my “two last names” and spelling them
out phonetically to create a new name for myself.
We are doing the same thing to marketing. While Millennials
appear to think they’ve reinvented the wheel, discovering a “whole new way to
market!” the truth is, they’re simply renaming what we’ve always done. Does
marketing now sound more hip? Maybe. Are the new names a new way to connect?
Absolutely. I believe that inherent to each of us, is the internal desire to
‘be a part of,’ and while I also believe we can and most often do enjoy what
makes us each unique, we really want to find our tribes. Social media does this
for us – it gives us a way to connect to like-minded people that we never would
have been able to find without an unlimited expense account to travel the world
and spend time with as many people as we could possibly see and talk with.
Instead, we now have the opportunity to connect with all of these people in
real time, with no distance felt between us. Renaming “older marketing”
processes is yet another way to connect with each other. As each new term
becomes the buzzword of the day, people hashtag it out and find others using
the same language we now do. While I’m not a fan of all the new terms, I do not
think they’re ‘bad,’ or shouldn’t be used. Marketing is all about speaking to
people in THEIR language, how THEY want to be spoken to, and if it’s through a
new word, it’s our job as marketing people to adapt to the changing landscape.
Here are some examples:
1.
FOMO
is the new envy: Without a catchy acronym, FOMO is nothing new. Aristotle
described it. Kant wrote books about it. Even the Book of Genesis names envy as
one of the 7 Deadly Sins. FOMO is just more fun to say, and if you look at the
word itself, FOMO simply looks better than envy, as we have come to associate
envy as something ugly. Interesting to note - I find people are very reluctant
to share their feelings of envy, perhaps because they feel they will be judged
if they exhibit this character defect, yet everyday on social media, people
proudly proclaim their #FOMO for people, experiences and situations. Don’t
believe me? Check out the tweets associated with the hashtag. Then google #envy
and noticed the marked difference.
2.
H2H
is the new 1:1: Confession – I’m not a huge fan of the term H2H. I feel like it
is a bit offensive – after all, I’m already human, and I only know how to
communicate with other humans, so to tell me that there’s this new way of doing
business or conducting my personal life in a “human to human” fashion, makes me
feel as though I’ve previously been incapable of speaking to people. I also
find it a tad demeaning, in that it ‘assumes’ a lack of intelligence when
looking at brands that (for example) tweet. I’ve been in brand marketing for
just over 15 years. I’ve been a consumer of brands for most of my 36 years. I
don’t think there’s ever been a second where I misunderstood that a tweet, or a
commercial or an ad from any brand came from the logo of the brand. Inherently,
I just knew that someone BEHIND the brand was speaking for the brand. Example –
I have worked both in-house for brands from the startup phase to multi-million
dollar companies. I have run their social media. Whether I was tweeting from my
laptop or my cell phone, I, as a human, was writing the correspondence. While
my goal was always for everyone seeing my content to know that it was Lucy
writing it, (until the communities got to know me personally) I think everyone
still figured out that a human was somewhere out there, actually writing or
typing out each letter in whatever they were reading. It has been a long time
strategy and tactic of marketing to try to speak to smaller groups if the brand
wants to be able to truly have an open back and forth conversation with them,
to introduce, talk about or answer questions about their product. It’s been
referred to as 1:1 Marketing, and I still relate to that term more.
3.
Social
Listening is the new paying attention: If you work in branding or
marketing, I believe you’ve always done this to at least a small extent,
without having a term to easily describe the process. Social listening refers
to looking at and identifying what is being said about a person or product or
brand on both the internet and in print (and definitely via WOM, but unless
it’s searchable, it’s hard to find mentions of something as it leaves peoples
lips). It’s becoming increasingly more important to spend more time giving
social listening credit. How else will you know messaging resonates within your
community and is reaching the right consumer at the right time? You just can’t.
If you delve into your community and have open honest conversations daily with
them, they will tell you everything you need to know.
4.
IRL
is the new um…it’s ALL IRL: Full disclosure: I don’t really “get” IRL. As
opposed to WHAT? What’s the alternative to living IRL? I’m real, therefore my
life is real, right? If it’s referring to in person vs online, what I do online
and the people I speak with are still also living their lives IRL, so unless
I’m missing out on a whole new universe that others are enjoying, I’m going to
keep living my life in IRL, and hope you are too, because otherwise I don’t
know where you are!
5.
Transparency
is the new being who you are: I started smoking when I was 17. I was scared to
death that my mom would find out, so I hid my cigarette pack in what I thought
at the time, was a most brilliant hiding spot – underneath the driver’s seat in
my car. You know what comes next – she found the pack. She was more upset that
I wasn’t honest with her than she was about the idea of my smoking (don’t get
me wrong, she does NOT in any way condone smoking). She said “Be who you are.
If you smoke, then be honest that you smoke.” The first part of that has stuck
with me to this day, and while some days are easier than others to outwardly be
who I am, that’s what transparency means to me.
Are there any terms you aren’t familiar with that you’d like
to see added to this list? Do you find yourself frustrated by the “rebranding
of marketing as we know it?” Let me know in the comments, or send me a tweet
@lucyrk78 and let me know your thoughts!
