Why do I suck at marketing?
Hi, my name is Eli Altman. I’m a branding expert with 20 years of experience working with some of the world’s biggest brands like Samsung, Apple, Lego, and Google. I also happen to be shit at marketing — like, really bad at it. Promotion, particularly self promotion, makes me uncomfortable. I work for years on projects and then barely promote them when they’re done. I avoid most social media. I haven’t been on Facebook or Instagram for years, primarily because they’re productivity black holes but also because I hate being marketed at. I don’t keep information on people who buy books from my site or try to sell people more than they want. I haven’t done SEM or SEO for ages. Like most things we’re bad at, there’s something about them that makes us uncomfortable — something that prevents us from diving in and doing the work to achieve a level of competency. This could be anything from disinterest to fiery contempt.
With marketing, I think the thing that makes me uncomfortable is the idea of foisting something on people that they might not be interested in. It feels like the same reason I was afraid to ask out Ashley De La Paz in 5th grade. I didn’t want to make her uncomfortable. A lot of this is tied to the marketing approaches where you’re repeatedly putting things in front of people to b̶u̶i̶l̶d̶ r̶e̶c̶o̶g̶n̶i̶t̶i̶o̶n̶ wear them down. People buy too much crap as it is. Late Stage Capitalism is upon us. We don’t need to employ cutting edge techniques in persuasive psychology to get people to buy more shit they don’t need.
If you produce something thoughtful and high quality, and share it with people in a genuine way, hopefully those people will do the marketing for you. I guess this has been my laissez faire marketing approach so far. This is not to say that companies aren’t successful with AI-Enabled Data-Driven Omnichannel Marketing Solutions 🤖📊🔥. Maybe they are. I’m just skeptical of what this does for anyone other than the people doing the marketing. If you want to use fancy marketing to get people to do something that’s good for them, like washing their hands or eating less meat, please go right ahead.
Does all this make me a hypocrite? I don’t know. Probably. Is it also possible to be misleading or disingenuous in branding? Absolutely. To me, branding is about establishing identity and differentiation. Both of these things happen to be easy to lie about — it’s easy to pretend you’re someone else or invent reasons why you’re different. Thankfully it’s even easier to get caught. Branding is rarely effective when it attempts to sell you something.
So what does all this say about the relationship between branding and marketing?
Branding usually comes first. Branding creates the identity and personality that marketing uses to speak with an audience. There are lots of potential disconnects here. If marketing pushes too far (annoying) or wide (speaking to everyone), it makes the brand feel inauthentic. Conversely, if you’re creating something for mass market appeal but try to develop a brand that feels personalized, you’re the one being disingenuous.
People call branding “marketing” and marketing “branding.” On our business license for A Hundred Monkeys, next to “type of business” it says “marketing services”. When I say I work in branding and someone doesn’t know what branding is, the first thing they usually ask is “you mean, like marketing?” <sigh> Sure. This is because almost all marketing contains branding. Branding is how you know what company is marketing to/at you. This is why good branding makes marketing easier — people know and remember who you are with minimal “impressions.” On the other hand, branding by default doesn’t contain marketing.
Branding is stone, marketing is Play-Doh. Branding should be built for the long haul. It’s not campaign-driven. You can always rebrand but it’s a massive effort that takes careful consideration plus lots of time and money. Marketing is flexible and reactive. It’s a series of experiments. If something doesn’t work, scrap it. If it works, double down. Hopefully you can do this without exhausting or alienating your audience.
It’s not that I don’t believe in marketing — I do. I know a good campaign when I see one. I like Seth Godin. I wouldn’t complain if my books sold a little faster to make more room in my basement (although, when that happens I just make more books so maybe my basement is doomed forever). Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that I haven’t really found an approach to marketing that feels good yet. There are people out there who would be interested in Don’t Call It That or Run Studio Run or Go Name Yourself, who don’t know about them yet. (⬆️ see what I did there with the link? Is tHaT mArkeTinG?!) I would like to say hi 👋 to these new people without annoying the people who have already been kind and generous enough to support my work. Maybe there’s a marketing strategy out there that accomplishes this. Maybe patience accomplishes the same thing.
