Our man sent me a link to this story Marketing, Journalism, and Truth as Competitive Advantage today, writing
except this piece of bullshit, which is the bullshittiest bullshit I've read all day: "Marketing is the quest for a product’s 'truth.' By that I mean the best marketers are on a journey to know how their company’s goods and services exist in the hearts and minds of their customers. Then, their job is to express that consumer truth to the best of their ability."
No, marketing is "How do we convince these rubes to buy this shit?" I said in reply to Walt. "Right," he said, "which is what journalism is now too."
:/
He's got a point though. The lines between what is marketing, what is advertising, and what is journalism, particularly in the LIFESTYLE JOURNALISM field I regularly traffic in that kills my soul a little more every day, are occasionally blurred. It's gotten to the point where you have marketing and PR people sending me pitches like this one below. I'm not if it's the single biggest PR fail I've gotten in a while, or the most honest one, ideally suited to the tenor of the current moment.
Hi Luke,
[lengthy pitch]
Please let me know if you would be interested in featuring [this bullshit thing]. Thanks so much and I look forward to hearing your interest!
Sure, send me a sample and I'll consider it.
Hi Luke –
We currently have a shortage of samples and are waiting on a new shipment. Would you be able to spotlight [the thing] on your website and I will personally make sure that you are first on the list to receive samples as soon as they arrive?
Well, I can't spotlight it until I try it, right?
Hi Luke –
Potentially you could spotlight it as an interesting new product without firsthand experience? Understandable though that you need to try it first.
Best...
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| snacking out on Chatham Village Fat Free Garlic & Onion Traditional Cut Croutons |
Come on. GTFO right? But maybe she's not even bad at her job. Maybe she has simply become so accustomed to the idea that we're all in this selling-shit game together that it's natural to expect me to simply do her job for her. That's not as outlandish as it sounds. As the article above points out, "To a great extent, marketing has been democratized." In other words, we've all signed on to to be brand ambassadors for our personal little taste preferences, and we advertise that affiliation for free on social media all the time. I'm not sure if that's the "truth" in journalism or in marketing that we're talking about here. If "the best marketers are on a journey to know how their company’s goods and services exist in the hearts and minds of their customers," there's one truth I can be certain of however: this product doesn't exist. I don't even remember what it was called. These croutons are pretty fucking salty though. I think I'll finish off the bag.
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This blog brought to you by Brawndo, the Thirst Mutilator.
These croutons just made my mouth and throat and soul taste like a poorly-fucked shoe. Thought about brushing teeth, but washed my mouth out with chocolate instead.
So did you 'spotlight' it?
Putting a can of "Brawndo in my youtube video caused it to get front page treatment on the brawndo website and resulted in my video getting 60K views. So yeah, internet marketing "works," if you define "works" as "made this number larger."
watching a number get bigger is how marketing, and blogging, works.
That article is marketing marketing to marketing people. "We marketers aren't just trying to sell things, you know. We're trying to get at the essential truth of a product."
(Also odds-on if you had spotlighted the croutons without her sending a sample you'd never have heard from her again.)
Totales. It wasn't really croutones she was trying to get me to sell though. I just threw them shits in for free because they were good.
Sorry, I gots to stop commenting on old posts! I was happy to read that "nowadays storytellers are just as much in demand as marketing graduates", though. (It could just mean that no-one wants either.)
I did a piece for Leisure last about the new Lego range for girls and the PR Q&A was actually quite frank about using pink/being sexist etc. Not sure when/if it's going up.
Nah dog, that's why they're in boxes at the bottom of every post, so people see all the shit that came before. Feel free.
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