Market Onto Others...
Being called a marketer is almost as bad as being a smoker nowadays, as a Kathy Sierra poster tries to intimate. "Please terminate yourself," he says, obviously thinking that her blog is sending out subliminal messages to vote Republican. Her reply in "You ARE a marketer. Deal with it." is basically this: if you are breathing, you are marketing.
We are constantly trying to convince, evoke, persuade. It starts as toddlers, stomping our feet so everyone will believe we really DO have to pee. And it continues into adulthood as we go on the internet and try to sell our views by flaming harmless female programmers in front of millions of surfers.
But marketing is not selling and yet, that is what the neo-marketers seem to be striving for. Selling is a personal, face-face activity. Marketing is an activity directed to the public, to people you don't know and haven't met. Is it impersonal? Yes. But is it cold and clinical if I put road signs out to get drivers to stop at my veggie stand? I hope not. After all, I don't care if its blacks or whites or WWII vets or skateboarders who stop, I just want somebody on my road to be interested enough to take a look at my sweet corn.
But the corn had better be good. It had better be sweet and plump and juicy and fresh. If this is so, then I am using my marketing tactics (attractive college girls, colorful banners, baby farm animals) honestly and doing my customers a favor. Its when companies use these devices for fraudulent purposes (rotten corn in the bottom of the bag, day old silage, short counts) that people get upset and give the rest of us a bad name.
So unless you know Ms. Sierra is selling kernels of Plutonium in her code, consider her and her products a benefit to society and use some of that pent-up energy to expose the real villains. And Kathy, try unchecking "Allow Comments" from now on. It works wonders.
(For more on this slant, read "The Science of Persuasion" by Robert B. Cialdini in the 2004 Mind issue of Scientific American)
