Here at IMC David Weinberger is on his feet. He’s having a go at marketing. Here’s one of his ideas which hits the spot for me. I’m paraphrasing here but I think I’ve got the gist.
Marketing has tended to fixate on simplification. We hear a lot about the importance of the elevator pitch the sharp tagline, the short sharp positioning statement or headline.
Marketing oversimplifies… which generally demeans consumers. He gives as examples the mainly crass straplines used to promote US cities.
Now, enter the blogosphere and a world where the customers are talking to each other.
This is a world where George Bush makes an important speech and his speechwriters distil it down to 2500 words, to articulate a simple idea. Within hours, there are 2500 separate blog posts relating to it, one interpretation for every word.
What goes on in the blogosphere is the great complexification… the blogosphere makes things complex again which runs against every instinct of marketers
In the ensuing discussion, several folks are keen to distinguish between marketing communications and all the other stuff marketing people do, which is a fair point.
There’s a point somewhere here about the paradox of complexity vs simplicity but I’ll save it for another day.
