[ photo courtesy ]
The below post is cross-posted from the newly launched WARC blog, where I’ll be posting the occasional ramble – nothing remotely groundbreaking here for regular readers, but musings I thought worth raising for the WARC audience:
It’s interesting, isn’t it, that the holy grail for marketers is engagement – to build meaningful relationships between people and our brands. And yet the way we think about marketing is frequently diametrically opposed to the desired end result.
The vocabulary of marketing is largely one of warfare – with the consumer as enemy combatant, on the receiving end of our merciless attacks. The etymology of the word ’strategy’ is military – literally meaning ‘the art of a general‘. And it’s just as applicable to the world of marketing as it is to the battlefield.
Think about it. How many times do we start by referring to the ‘target’ when considering audiences? (The fact that we talk about ‘consumers’ rather than simply ‘people’ is another strange beast, as it automatically frames people purely within the context of consumption rather than as the multifaceted human animals that we are, but that’s a whole other issue). So we launch aggressive campaigns carefully designed for maximum impact and to gain captive audiences, thinking about strikeweights and guerilla tactics to do battle, gain market dominance and kill the competition.
Hardly the language of fostering engagement and relationship building, is it?
We all know by now that people aren’t receptacles waiting eagerly for our advertising messages, and very often could quite happily live without whatever we’re trying to sell – but surely trying to conquer the enemy and beat them into submission isn’t the most effective solution? Isn’t trying to earn the right for our brands to be a part of people’s world, rather than trying to force our way in, ultimately going to be more valuable in the longer term?
We’d probably all agree that this is what we’re trying to do, and that a relationship based on permission and trust is far more desirable than one of force and conquest – and yet the language of marketing doesn’t appear to have caught up.
The vocabulary we use undoubtedly affects the way we approach things – both consciously and subconsciously. So if we want to actually develop marketing that’s based on marketing with people rather than to them, awareness of the language we use, and a concerted effort to move away from thinking about marketing as warfare, has got to be a move in the right direction.
Surely ‘Engagement’ is also a military term – as in ‘engaging the enemy’ ;-)
Totally with you on the terminology though – if we talk about people as ‘consumers’ we are limiting our view of the people we want to work with by viewing them through the lens of our relationship with them. So we communicate with people in terms of what makes them consume rather than what makes them people.
brilliant article and bang on
Hi Katy – I’m a first time commenter, but long time reader.
Completely agree with the notion of your post. Particularly the use of the term consumer.
In an age where brands are moving away from one directional comms and are looking at crowd sourcing, feedback loops and engagement, surely it is time we moved away from the restrictive and limiting term ‘consumer’.
Surely a crowdsourcing consumer is an oxymoron of the worst kind.
Nicely put Katy. I think the language we use is an underated form of influence in how we think. And I totally agree with what you’re saying:
http://bit.ly/bMUvYd
This blog is fast becoming my favourite. Telling it like it is Katy.
You can take this ‘warfare mentality’ analogy even further – it is often so entrenched that it has no clear idea of who the real targets are or should be.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8fpbYbzmxE
Fantastic article and I laughed all the way through as I realized how true your words are. I’m struggling with how to help people understand social media … yup, and the picture your story gave me was shoveling words (keywords) down a funnel into someone’s mouth. I laughed over & over.
@Graeme too true! although I think engaging someone within a meaningful relationship is rather different to engaging the enemy. But yes, care with language can’t go amiss
@matt thanks!
@daan yes absolutely – the brilliant mark earls aka herdmeister puts it far more eloquently than me, if you’ve not read his stuff it’s far better than mine
@neil ah, great minds! I’d not seen your post, well, let’s just say I agree wholeheartedly with you :)
@rory cheers! that’s a great vid – thanks for the heads up
@tina yep, particularly within the social-media-blowhard community of self styled social media experts, there’s an alarming amount of marketing bollocks being tossed around….
very well said. it reminds me of a post i wrote long long time ago…
http://is.gd/7×6h1
@asi aaah wicked post dude, love it. not seen that one, thanks for the heads up. as usual you say it much better than I could – I wasn’t wrong when I said it was nothing new for you guys!
hmmm, seems like lots of bloggers have taken issue with the us-and-them language of mktg.
me too. the term messaging makes my teeth itch for similar reasons. if it had been “the messaging” by grandmaster flash, that would really have sucked.
http://bit.ly/2Xo5P0
Interesting post, you may enjoy this video, along the same lines.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-wK6AUyZiA