Making The Sale Girly Man
Gosh it amazes me that new marketing, word of mouth marketing and social media types constantly cry about having to make sales for their clients (like it’s a bad thing). It’s like we’ve created a generation of as Arnold would say “girly men“.
Yesterday Spike Jones of Brains on Fire (word of mouth marketing company) wrote this girly man statement:
Is all marketing self serving? It’s a question I struggle with. But I guess it’s because I know the answer: YES, all marketing is self-serving. Even this blog and twitter account and LinkedIn and Facebook and all of it – it’s not just sharing information. It’s self-serving.
Yea, I’m pretty sure we exist to make money and add to that we exist to make our client’s money. Making sales for our customers should be a top if not the top priority. Some of these girly men are taking social media to a new level, sort of like, dare I say a religion.
Snap out of it people.
Brand Identity Guru is a for profit company that wants to make money for ourselves and our customers. We love and are passionate about what we do and we charge a premium price for it. I get pumped up when I know that something we executed for a client made our client piles of cash.
Is marketing self serving? You betcha, thank god for that!
p.s. This was my comment to Spike about his blog post:
Maybe you should curl up with a pint of Häagen-Dazs and a romance novel and cry yourself to sleep…
Last time I checked, you, me and all agencies are still in business to make money. Customers want and expect us to profit from them in exchange for the value (whatever that is, including sales) we bring. That’s the payoff.
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November 6th, 2008 at 12:16 pm
It seems to go back to the fact that we’ve been taught that “profit” is a dirty word.
We’ve largely lost the idea of wealth creation, and traded it for the idea of one single “pie”: if one person has a big slice of the pie, it means everyone else has to take less. If this is the case, then being self-serving may be the greatest evil. If, instead, there is no pie, but we are all in a kitchen, then it’s probably best that each person make their own pie.
Would the world be a better place if people were less self-serving in general? Almost certainly true. But except for a few people, that’s mostly not going to happen. Even the best of us act out of self-interest more often than not. Better to have a system that harnesses that self-serving drive rather than ignoring it.
The underpinnings of this squeamishness about profit are, I think, socialistic in origin. Everyone should, apparently, want to create wealth for the good of his fellow man–despite the bitter fact that almost no-one actually wants to do this. The ability to make a profit generally indicates greater skill than someone who doesn’t make a profit: in a society where we are loath to recognize any inequality, this doesn’t go over well.
November 8th, 2008 at 10:04 am
Joi, you and I think waaayyy to much a like. You’re the best.