My friends, I'm afraid our colleagues don't respect us much anymore.
Sure, they give us fancy titles (Chief Marketing Officer, Worldwide Creative Director) but they don't really seem to take our titles very seriously. (Why can't they respect our titles? Don't they realize we're only going to have them for 18 months? What's the harm?)
Lately, they've been asking to "see the stuff" before it goes out. They say they'll "get back to us" on how the meeting went. They'll "have to see" if they have the money to fund our recommendations...
It didn't used to be this way. They used to pay close attention to what we said. They didn't dare give each other eye-rolls when we talked. Bean-counter bastards!
But that was back in the bad old days when we were nothing more than glorified salesmen. (The problem is, we were too damn good at selling and they wanted to keep us doing it!)
Then we all agreed that selling wasn't what we were about. Selling is a crass, unpleasant thing that educated, artistically focused, technologically savvy people shouldn't have to bother with (we're better than that, dammit!)
So we re-invented ourselves. We're not like those greasy old Madison Avenue hucksters -- always looking for the silliest little differences among products to make a big fuss over...
We see things differently. We build communities. We build brands. We create engagement through the art of cultural conversations. We're not like those smarmy strivers always trying to foist something on consumers who couldn't talk back!
Things are different now. We attend international conferences and sometimes we're even on panels!
We have a vision of a new, brighter day for marketing. Where consumers are fully engaged. In this new digitally-enabled world we'll have a relationship with our customers. There'll be no need for "selling" or "advertising."
I don't understand why our colleagues can't see this. Why they're always going on about whether some idea will "sell anything."
Haven't we gotten beyond that?
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