Translating between Markets
What is an audience anyway?
I was really impressed by an interview between Mark Schaefer and Phil Gerbyshak that came across my radar:
One of the things that really makes me smile is when I find marketers who try to push back against the prevailing groupthink. In that article, Mark and Phil use a symbolism of “brosocial” or “social me-me-media.” to describe these echo-chambers of ‘me too’ marketers.
Thru the discussion they meander into a number of different topics on what it means to be an effective marketer in the internet era. I don’t consider myself a marketer, but I do find I am often butting heads against some of the more insidious forms of that ‘me-me-media’ effect. So I think their particular philosophy is one worth amplifying.
My only caveat: I find that when stumbling upon people from the marketing world who ‘get it’, they are still encumbered with language from their profession. Not that this is a bad thing necessarily. Mark even admits that it’s worth considering your audience:
“I am finding my own audience in my own authentic way.”
Echoing a simlar notion Phil had mentioned earlier:
I think that’s why it’s important to write for the right audience and not worry that it doesn’t resonate with everybody. If you connect through content, you can be intimate even if you don’t know that they’re out there.
In a certain sense, having them ‘stick to the script’ and work within the language of their particular audience is exactly what we need to help push back. Language barriers can only be broken down from within.
But I want also to amplify the message of the philosophy itself, not the conveying language norms. Given that, I took the liberty to translate some of the key phrases in the writing to something that is more fitting to my personal framing.
So marketer or not, I hope after seeing this translation and reading some of Mark’s posts you might be able to see past the odd language norms and look at the people behind them.
People who just want to be cared about.
