In Enemy Territory

A few weeks ago I was a speaker at a social media conference in Minneapolis. I was facing a ballroom full of social mediacrats and was surprised at the graciousness with which my ungracious remarks were received.

Best of all, I escaped with all my major body parts intact.

It was billed as a "fireside chat" between the excellent Jason Falls, leader of the conference, and me. I had imagined a roaring fireplace, smoking jackets, and brandy snifters.

Alas, it's just Jason, me, and the world's largest chair.

Speaking So As Not To Be Understood

Throughout history the purpose of speaking and writing has been to be make oneself understood. Not any more. There is a new way of speaking and writing in the world of marketing, the purpose of which is to sound like you're saying something without actually saying anything at all.

Welcome to The Golden Age of Bullshit.

Now writers, pundits and industry bigwigs write and speak so as to be misunderstood. They write in ways that intentionally misuse language, and they speak in riddles to hide their vacuity. They hide behind buzzwords and cliches which they throw around willy nilly regardless of context.

The practice of creating a simple declarative sentence that means what it says is outmoded. Today's marketing pundit, in order to be taken seriously, must speak in tongues.

So we get nonsense like this:

"I have a deep love and appreciation of the different roles of product pricing, go-to-market, competitive differentiation, etc that make up the marketing value chain. I’m not discounting the strategic parts of making sure there’s a business model, but I’m focusing on the part that the vast majority of people think of as “marketing”. You and I might know this is more about promotions than the full range of marketing but most people don’t recognize this distinction."

Now you might think that the paragraph above was written by a not-very-bright junior college marketing student. But it wasn't. It was written by a person who claims to be a Stanford lecturer and a Harvard Business Review author.

Then we get this from the incoming Chairman of the 4As:

"Branded content was an interim expression. To me now, saying branded content is like saying advertising, because it’s all about content and how we insert the brands into that message to add true utility for the customer."

Oh.

Here's a simple way to figure out who's full of shit and who isn't. If someone is saying something you don't understand, and it's not about quantum theory or special relativity, more likely than not he's full of shit.

Strategy Versus Tactics

These days the tactical always drives out the strategic. Strategies are what businesses love to talk about. Tactics are what they do.

I don't care how many months of meetings, focus groups, and powerpoints it took to derive your brilliant business strategy. I don't care how many teams of C-suite knuckleheads you had to present to and persuade. I don't care how many millions of dollars they agreed to invest in the new strategic direction. Just have 3 weeks of lousy sales and you'll be back doing "buy-one, get-one free."

Unfortunately, it is not just marketing that is subject to the tyranny of tactics. It's also why our political system is so screwed up.

In politics, strategy doesn't get you elected. Tactics do.

Everyone in Washington knows that we are headed for a fiscal melt down. Both parties agree that the current budgets are unsustainable. This is not a secret. But there is no strategy to deal with it.

A sensible, strategic way to deal with this is with a combination of tax increases and spending cuts.

But half the congress is loathe to raise taxes and the other half is loathe to cut spending.

Each party has its own tactics for getting votes, and each party refuses to abandon its tactics in favor of a strategy that would avoid the impending train wreck.

Strategy is the stuff of essays, off sites, and conferences. Tactics rule the real world.