I’m pretty bored of a lot of marketing and a lot of the conversations about it.
I enjoyed Alan Jourdier’s latest post, It Really Is About (Gulp) Leadership. It resonates with me. Here’s some of what caught my eye:
While I enjoy reading about metrics and convergence and all the other buzz words we marketers use and go to conferences for the more confirmed I am that it all boils down to leadership as the marketing engine…
I know to say leadership sounds trite, but how can it not be so?.. Call it what you want but how can the way people treat each other within a group not affect the viability and effectiveness of that group and ultimately the marketing?..
I facilitated a “retreat” last Saturday where the tension and fear was thick in the air and very few truly honest thoughts were spilled so that Monday morning life would resume its usual, dysfunctional pattern. Very sad to think of those professioinals being in such a constipated environments. Fear is such a potent and detrimental process that strips away the ability to think clearly, creatively and with any passion.
Alan goes on to discuss how one participant did try to cut through, and how he was frustrated. It reminds me of several meetings I’ve attended where the surface politeness covers a lot of unspoken material.
It’s my hunch that boring marketing is the result of boring meetings. I think strangulated internal conversations can only give rise to strangulated conversations with the marketplace. As time passes, I am less interested in discussing marketing strategies with people, and more concerned with what is happening to conversations in the moment. Let the strategy, such as it is, emerge from the engaging conversations… and let’s not expect it to work the other way around.
Take a look at what we’re being sold in most TV ads, with all the slippery argument by analogy. It’s very hard to believe a group of people got really pumped up by the idea of foisting this stuff on an unsuspecting world. And these days, if you dodge the lively conversation inside the business, someone on the outside is going to start it for you…
