Again, good marketing takes guts

A few months ago we were talking about Scoble's observation to the effect that any marketing website without a RSS feed should be flushed down the toilet. 

He's right, and here's why:  synthetic fables created by ad firms simply can't compete with honest, soulful stories told direct to you and me from another human being.

Case in point:  if you're a fan of the Pittsburgh Steelers, do you feel more soulfully connected to the brand if you read this or this?  The answer is clearly the latter.  Why?  Because RSS combined with authentic, human content signals a new paradigm of marketing communications.  The brands and people who will succeed in this new paradigm are the ones with real stories and the guts to tell them without the mediocrity-inducing filter of marketing "professionals".  Good marketing takes guts.

Comments

[thisislarry]

Diego, how much of this phenomenon do you think is due to the adoption lag between people and corporations? It used to be that getting a call on the phone was considered an honest experience, before telemarketers discovered they could exploit people's tendency to 'believe' a phone call -ie pick up the phone.

In an exponentially faster period, email turned into spam.

Now, when I go thru Blogger's randomizer, at least 20% of the blogs I encounter are fakes. Poor fakes, but these will get better. I'm sure these all have RSS feeds to somewhere.

So, is designing a website for an RSS feed just chasing the cutting edge? Will something be lost (like authenticity) when RSS goes corporate?

[Jim Kukral]

I guess it just depends on how good of a marketing professional you are. If you're good, you're smart enough to hire real writers that can better mimic an authentice voice. It all comes down the the authenticity. Readers are not stupid, and can see through transparent attempts to fool them.

[David M. Chess]

I can't quite decide if you're being ironic about the RSS-feed thing or not. You're quite right that it's all about the authentic voice. And the authentic voice has only the most tenuous connection to the presence or not of an RSS feed.

"RSS combined with authentic, human content signals a new paradigm of marketing communications"? Sure! But just as truly "[anything else] combined with authentic, human content signals a new paradigm of marketing communications"...

[Diego from Metacool]

No, I'm not being ironic. As a rule, I try to avoid irony and sarcasm in my life.

I'm actually quite earnest about RSS and its importance to marketing. I don't buy your "[anything else]" argument, as I can think of lots of things that just don't fit that equation, i.e. "direct marketing", "brand management", "branding", "tofu cheese", etc...

[David M. Chess]

So branding combined with authentic, human content wouldn't signal a new paradigm of marketing communications? 'kay, maybe not; that's your field not mine. *8) I do have to disagree with you about the tofu cheese, though.

Maybe I'm just being geeky here, and you're using "RSS" to mean something like "easy to use syndication" (which would include Atom, RDF / Dublin / RSS mish-mashes like your own syndication feed, and so on), while I'm reading it as referring to a specific rather chaotic set of XML standards and quasi-standards.

Might "easy-to-use syndication combined with authentic, human content signals a new paradigm of marketing communications" perhaps express your actual intent better (without appearing to emphasize a particular specific this-year syndication schema)? Just a thought. I have nothing against RSS, but the important thing (it seems to me) is widely-supported and easy to use syndication mechanisms (and that authentic voice), not anything RSS-specific. Unless there's really something about RSS in particular that you wanted to praise...

[Diego from metacool]

David,

Yes -- you're right. It's not just about RSS. RSS is just a means to an end, and you've just articulated that end very well. Thank you.

Again, I view this as a sandbox for ideas, so I fire 'em out quickly. Conversations like this are a great way to iterate and move them forward! As Bob Lutz is fond of saying, "Often wrong, never in doubt".

[David M. Chess]

"Often wrong, never in doubt": I like that! *8)

You're welcome, and thanks.

[Jill Draper]

a. How often, as a creative professional, have you gone out on a limb?

b. How often, as a creative professional, have you gone out on a limb only to have it break off?

c. How often, as a creative professional, have you gone out on a limb, and it doesn't break off, and there's your baby, shakin' its tailfeathers in a dance of jubilee?

It doesn't take a genius to kill a good idea, sometimes we can do that our own dumb selves. And if a) happens, b) will surely follow, but c) will happen often enough to keep you doing a).

Work naked. Wear sunscreen.

Jill