The Marketing Neanderthals

Disclaimer: Any resemblance to people living or dead is purely coincidental!

Amidst all the marketing sophistication (or is it sophistry!) that pervades our lives, it’s unimaginable how a bunch of old school practices still stick their way through... like chewing gum on a shoe. A bunch of legacy balderdash that the tick-boxers of marketing have gladly paraded to validate their sense of worth. My simple list of garble that’s to be called out.

1.???The Newsletter is Dead – Deal with it! “Do unto others what you do unto yourself” just doesn’t seem to apply to the Neanderthals who treat these with utter fondness. These fond journalists of corporate literature curate content that nobody wants to read. Why would one let go of that sycophantic opportunity to get a leader wax eloquent courtesy a ghost writer or to make it appear like a visual stimuli of an information compendium that fits into the Marketing leader’s string of impressive achievements. Short form quick content is the key for consumption. All else is hogwash.

2.???Long-form is long gone – Keep it short not stupid! Mark Twain’s timeless lines: “I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead” resonates in much of what we see. Armed with SEO rationale, verbose content finds its way, sitting like a holy cow in the middle of highway. As an increasing number marketers thrive in a content outsourced world, long form works best for word count based revenues for content creators and the optics of volume for marketers.

3.???Hard Copy is Trash Worthy – Think digital! Earlier this year when 1500 drones in a QR Code formation lit the night sky above Shanghai for a downloadable video game, the opportunity in marketing collaterals reached new heights (pun totally intended). While digital content with its ability to be evolved continuously seems like a no-brainer, hundreds of pages of forest eating books get created in the name of coffee table fantasies. And as you notice handouts at events are still very much around. Digital offers beautiful opportunities for content rendering and the Neanderthals have a challenge seeing it.

4.???Fancy Navigation is a level of separation – Simplify! As UI and UX take center stage, haven’t we all seen the kiddish fancy of those who want to use content formats like animated books with music to pair for corporate content. All content is most effective when served easiest and the application of common-sense with a focus on reduced degrees of separation should do the trick.

Bottom-line, more brief means less grief!

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