The fastest way to shut down a conversation is to tell someone you’re ‘in marketing’.
Why is that?

Over the past six decades, the perception of marketing has changed dramatically. Marketing has gone from being a helpful conversation to being perceived as sleight of hand tactics that trick people into making decisions they later regret. That’s not the kind of marketing I grew up around. And it’s not the kind of marketing I want to practice or see in the world.

The kind of marketing I witnessed growing up was the helpful conversations my mother had with Buckley’s butchers about the best cuts of meat to buy for the meal she wanted to cook, within her budget. Their marketing worked even when the supermarket chains arrived because the Buckley’s had earned people’s trust over years of helpful conversations.

The promise of ‘new marketing’ was that we could reach more people, faster and cheaper. What wasn’t as clearly understood was what might be lost by going for those quick wins.

It turns out that the tools and tactics of new marketing aren’t a shortcut. The tried, trusted and true methods of old marketing help us to maintain our integrity and get to where we want to go.

Image by Denise Jans