NonMarketing

The new marketing is not marketing,

The new marketing is non-marketing.

I’ve been studying some of the new media from the outside — mostly Snapchat, and its younger sibling Slinger. My first report was on the obvious element. I looked at some of the differences between landscape and portrait orientation, horizontal versus vertical.

At the moment I’m interested in marketing in these new media, and how it differs on all sides of the sale: the manufacturer, the marketer. and the consumer.

Here are some of my observations, for what they’re worth coming from an interested observer - not a user, a marketer or employee.

The manufacturer (or whatever business, product or service is produced or available for sale) wants what it has always wanted — to reach an audience or market, to make sales. For a long time now, the most effective way to do that is through people who make it their business to help businesses do just that. Marketing and advertising specialists. (Right or wrong, I’ll lump them together here as ‘marketers’.)

Marketing is more than simply a skill, it’s an art form. Today, it’s a huge industry which spends a lot of time, money, and effort making sure it sells the right product the right way to the right people. To be sure, marketing sells more than simply consumer goods.

Snapchat and Slinger (and other media like Vine, Meerkat, Periscope) are the gateway (window, if you prefer) to a very desirable audience for business people. Basically, they’re young and have disposable income (evidence: money for gadgets and data plans etc.), which is crack for marketers and business. So of course people want to sell them stuff, and marketers want to know how to do it.

Marketers know that when it comes to marketing, one size does not fit all. Different media, different marketing strategies.

But there’s a curious thing about vertical video media.

Most people are not big fans of advertising. Fashion magazines and Superbowl Sunday aside, no one wants to see the ads. But in spaces like Snapchat, the users don’t just dislike ads and marketing, they really, really, dislike it. They resent it. And any foolish person or brand that wants to just jump in and try and be sneaky about promoting something will do very serious damage very quickly.

Why is this? Well, I’d say it has something (I mean, a lot) to do with the very personal nature of the media (which I make a case for in this post, though my esteemed friend Paul disagrees with some of my conclusions). You don’t want your friends treating you like customers. Not very friendly.

In the small amount of blogs available on the subject one word comes up: Authenticity. Don’t try to sell things, tell your stories.

These are story telling platforms.

So tell stories, don’t try to sell stories. The audience here has a very advanced bullshit detector and you will do way more harm than good.

And don’t try to buy off an “Influencer” because they (and the audience) know better.

There’s good news here, though marketing, as we know it, does not seems to have a place.

The good news is, you can tell stories.

If you are a brand, you can tell your brand’s story (and stories). You can go out of the office, see who’s on their smart phone on Vine and Snapchat and Slinger and Periscope and Meerkat and whatever else I don’t even know about yet, and give them a task — to tell a story. Because they’re part of your brand’s story too. They can make stories about themselves, about their work, about you — the crazy boss that lets them make stories and post them on social media. They will do just fine as long as they don’t try to do more than have fun and tell stories. Yes, you will be paying them to do this.

(I’m using the phrase “tell stories” and “storytelling” here but there’s a lot of different ways to tell or show or otherwise make a story. Copy, emulate, experiment.)

And all the while, they are marketing without marketing — if you follow me. If the stories catch on, you can reach a very large audience. Exposure.

These are new media, different media (mediums, if you prefer) and so there are different rules. Get cute and sneaky and positiony at your peril (mind, you could probably do something like it in a transparent and campy way). Have fun, experiment, play along and get your people involved and you have absolutely nothing to lose as long as you’re genuine.

Marketers can play too, but tread lightly, and play by the rules — the new rules.

One last note on authenticity. For our purposes, authentic means not manipulating people into a sale. It does not mean you can’t make things up! In fact, quite the opposite. The ridiculous, the amazing, and the unbelievable are the order of the day.

Thank you for reading, entertaining my observations and sketchy conclusions! Feel free to comment or reach me at andrew@umeom.com