I went to school for marketing, Integrated Marketing to be specific. What this means is that I get Advertising, PR, Promotions, Event Marketing, Sales, your “media mix”, as it were, to all work together.
This is what gets the customer to take out their wallet, right? Convince them that your widget is the best and if you don’t buy it, well, I tried to warn you.
Unfortunately, a wrench was thrown into that idea. Or two wrenches to be precise.
First, a realization that no matter what people say, you can’t sell to somebody who genuinely does not want to buy. Or maybe if you do sell them something, by misrepresenting what you are selling, you don’t have a customer, you have a sale. A sale is a one-time, non-repeating event.
Why?
Because There Is No Relationship
Yeah, you sold them something once, but they didn’t really need or want what you had the first time so why would they buy again? You added no value to their life, you just took their money.
The second reason goes hand in hand with the first, Web 2.0.
What do we do when we are going to buy a product or try a new restaurant? We ask people we know. We want to know what other people think.
And with the new Web, we 
can ask a lot more people. The guys in your office might not know about the new software program you want, but there is somebody that has it and is dying to tell you how great (or bad) it is.
So we don’t need to rely on advertisers to tell us about their great, new product. Our buddies on Facebook, or Twitter, or MySpace or Amazon will tell us and they are infinitely more believable. It’s not their job to sell you; they just want to tell you their opinion.
In response to these two developments, a disconcerting thing has tunneled its way into marketing.
Honesty.
No hiding behind witty ads, clever PR stunts, and great “messages”. Bummer too, I am good at the witty ads. But, I think this honesty and adding value to your client’s thing might be worth a shot, too.
If you agree, contact 366 and let’s talk.