There are, inevitably, both pros and cons to reaching maturity at a time when economies around the world are collapsing, a time when even the assumed recession-proof financial superpowers in the Middle East are bellowing smoke signals for help.
Social marketing has, ostensibly, helped many brands bridge the chasm that can separate consumer confidence and corporate promises; it has added value to products and corporations where value was previously lacking. We have seen relatively run-of-the-mill companies, such as Coffee Grounds and Zappos, leverage social media in ways that have transformed their marketing strategies, revitalised their customer service policies and even enhanced their core business models, turning them into local and global superstars.
For Crimes Against Language….
The chief virtue that language can have is clearness, and nothing detracts from it so much as the use of unfamiliar words – Hippocrates
Pop quiz, readers. Re-calibrate your synapses, set your faces to stunned and prepare for linguistic splashdown. Feast your eyes on this smorgasbord of gibberish and pick out the runt of the litter:
“Building a conversation strategy will allow us to visually see our complete marketing ecosystem and bake in our communication throughout all touch points.”
“First, by socializing all media, the engagement experience is cyclical and ongoing. Second, by identifying conversation groups (social graphs) and tapping directly into them and then connecting them together, the long tail of niche market segments become your mass or ‘mainstream’ media play.”
“Develop a multi-faceted communication program utilizing both traditional media and truly interactive social media channels, where listening and acting upon your human being’s wants is KING”
“A multimedia mix framed to spark conversations requires a compelling message concept that can work across a multimedia platform.”
“…Package the compelling message (internal marketing, external marketing and social network marketing) into an organized dashboard that exponentially expands website real estate, then push the content in real time to all product/service distribution points…”
Which of these abominations were written with a straight face, by real people with working brains? And which is the fraudulent imposter, demanding to be bound in the back of a transit van, driven to a remote woodland clearing and shot at close range through the back of the head? Well, are you sitting down? Because, remarkably, they are all genuine. And to someone somewhere they really do mean something. To those displaying the characteristics of sentient and evolved human beings, however – upright, opposable thumbs, a rational mistrust of Scientology and men with winter tans – they are nothing more than a dreadful noise. A low, humming dreadful noise. And as someone who sat through much of the Guantanamo Bay-inspired torture purporting to be cutting-edge insight, from the industry’s “leading thinkers” at this year’s Cannes Festival, like a latter day, hairier Martha Gellhorn I can report from the frontline that this sort of smoke-and-mirrors propaganda is not restricted to the written word. People actually say this stuff, too. And other people clap. Loudly. Something is rotten in the state of Denmark. Or, to put it less succinctly, the Danish vertical has become unsynergised from the positive engagement factor of the mainstream virtual/emotional experience vector.
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