Resurface


Digital marketers and advertisers need to resurface. We need to get back in the game where the participants are, and transform our language into one where we can understand the customers, not talk right passed them.

resurface

As Jonathan Graham of Anamoly UK pointed out in the “Good Ideas & Mobile” panel of friday’s PSFK Good Idea Salon London:

    It’s the terminology that gets us into trouble. There is no “Digital Revolution”, there is no “New Technology” there is just stuff.

Backed up by Jenny Owen of Ruby Pseudo who stated:

    “I had to stop asking people about Brands, they were going, “What is a b…?” They call them companies”.

whatisabrand

In a different panel “Good Ideas and Mobile”, Jonathan MacDonald pointed out that talking about technology and applications makes no sense, the future opportunities will be discovered when exploring people, how they act, their activities and motives, and as a concept of “every single one of us”, his personal project

Anxiety disorderseffects on sexual function, mood and cognition are less viagra vs cialis.

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Personally, as I have understood it, this has also been the intention of Mark Eearls’ January B*** project. Where the goal is to stop talking about the a B**** and start creating true and real meaning.

But of course there is a hitch
. A specialist vernacular is something that develops over time, some of it due to the eagerness to coin new stuff, but also some of it to create discussion about a subject with greater ease and richness. Specialist terms are developed to ad more context and meaning to discussion without using as many words :o) and as a result these terms become laden with value and meaning. Just removing them will become problematic.

But the point I think I’m trying to make is that we might need to resurface, we are starting to create a toxic relationship to our subject, where the topic itself becomes more important than the people we are working for.

If January was the month of the b****, then February is the month of resurfacing.

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4 Comments

  1. February 2

    Helge: I always enjoy reading what you have to offer. I hate to say that most of it is just good (it seems a disservice). This is one of those that really strikes me above everything else you provide.

    Yes. We have been shooting ourselves in the foot for too long. It’s high time to take the digital marketing reigns. Many of the reasons we talk in technical jargon and increasingly cryptic terms is derived from the need to defend ourselves for so many years.

    Can we put on a good front and take ownership of marketing as a whole now that the shift is underway? I’d like to think so, but I’m prepared to be taken to task for every digital effort. I just hope we’re as willing to take the misses in digital as well as we were with the traditional.

  2. February 2

    Hi Cory, appreciate the honest feedback. Good is a brilliant place to be on the road to greatness :o)

    Also, thanks for the valuable additions. I feel the format of a blog really doesn’t open up to the opportunity of nuance that we often carry with us. Therefore we seem more black and white than we necessarily are.

    I for certain seem extremely “digital” but it’s not necessarily because I’m blind to traditional advertising (why disrespect something that has proven its value over and over again?).

    It’s because digital is my field and the stuff I know. I depend on my readers to ad the thoughts from this blog to the rest of the palette that they carry.

    As Malcolm Gladwell said in response to Duncan Watts: All we have are pieces, and hopefully one day we will be able to put enough of them together to finish the whole puzzle.

    Again, thanks for the contribution :o)
    Best
    Helge

  3. […] creating a range of activities each based on different platforms best abilities. I’m trying to resurface the term “digital is not a silo” as even though it simple to say out loud, it carries a very […]

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