I Am An Outbound Spam Filter

A few weeks ago a client generously told me that they valued my contribution because I was trying to, ‘do good stuff’.  'In fact', his colleague added lightheartedly, 'you are our outbound spam filter'.  The remark was clearly intended as a compliment but initially I was confused.  The client's company was not to my knowledge a great user of low-down spamming techniques.  However, I soon realised that the comment didn't refer to unwanted email but more generally to traditional ‘push’ marketing.  I really liked this fun description and it also set me thinking.  Traditional marketing isn't really like spam - is it?  Clearly spam, the underground practice of harvesting emails from the web and launching bulk campaigns pushing largely illegal goods, is a long way from the activities of the mainstream marketing industry.  However, it's fair to say that both involve dispatching commercial messages to large audiences in the hope that one or two individuals will be interested.  That aside, traditional marketing, in its defence, exists around a positive exchange where people accept some promotion in exchange for free or subsidised media and entertainment.  But there's no doubt that this exchange has been abused to the point that people now use filtering technology beyond their email box.  Sky+ and Freeview allows viewers to ‘avoid’ television advertising.  Adblockers let people remove banners and pop-ups from their surfing.  Direct mail can be stopped through the Mailing Preference Service.  So, increasingly, traditional marketing and spam, while different entities, do share some characteristics.  Which, considering that spammers are thought of as semi-criminal pondlife, can hardly be positive.  But what's the alternative?  If you can’t buy attention for your messages through paid media, what can you do?  A while back I suggested that that as media becomes increasingly networked and socially driven, brands will need to ‘earn the right’ to operate through positive participation.  Only this mindset will allow them to build the goodwill that is the lifeblood of the modern social web.  The web that the majority of their customers probably now use in some shape or form.  I noticed this week that Fred Wilson has picked up on a similar notion that he describes as Paid Media vs Earned Media and suggests it's just good business.  The practicalities of this earn-it approach are creating something of value that people genuinely want, seek out and recommend.  And committing to that over the long-term.  Or as my client put it - ‘do good stuff’.  So there it is.  After years of trying to describe my job to my family, friends and professional associates, it turns out that I am an, ‘outbound spam filter’.  Not the most graceful job title in the world.  But at least there’s a future in it.

Comments

[John Dodds]

All marketing directed at the mass audience (even a targetted demographic) might be described as spam because it's not a "message" that many of those people don't want to receive.

[John Dodds]

(corrected for double negative)

All marketing directed at the mass audience (even a targetted demographic) might be described as spam because it's not a "message" that many of those people want to receive.

[James Cherkoff]

Thanks John. So you don't draw a distinction between the mainstream advertising industry and online spammers?

[Brad Bell]

Information wants to spread. Advertising wants to be ignored ;-)

"The practicalities of this earn-it approach are creating something of value that people genuinely want, seek out and recommend."

The end of the mass media age is marked by the decline of the propaganda model. For marketing, this translates as a decline in advertising. Mad Men appears at the historical moment when the world it describes ceases to exist.

A movie analogy: in the old days, movies built an audience over weeks and months by positive word of mouth initiated by reviewers/critics who got to see the movie first. More recently, movie studios have switched to the 'blockbuster' model: shite movies with gargantuan marketing budgets drive as many people as possible to opening weekend where all the money is made before word of mouth can leak the truth. Reviewers see the movie when everyone else does. The blockbuster model is the epitome of mass media propaganda marketing.

The declining importance of the mass media relative to cheap and democratic internet media means companies can no longer deliver crap products and services. They can't rely on marketers and short term results. They have to contend with word of mouth. Sucking is no longer an option.

Spam is the result of using mass media techniques on internet media. While forward-thinking marketers are at opposite ends of the spectrum from spammers, the bulk of the industry is simply trying to make a buck in the simplest way possible. The sad fact is marketers bring the Orwellian propaganda model to everything they do. Every flaw is a 'feature.' Every monologue is a 'conversation.' Every target market is a 'community.' The death of advertising is inevitably twisted into Advertising 2.0. For every real problem, there is an imaginary solution. Marketers are used to selling things that suck. Intriguingly, marketers have a self-preservational blind spot which prevents them from seeing that they have become as obsolete as commercial TV. But what industry has ever let obsolescence get in the way of a business model?

Conventional marketers today treat internet media as new broadcast spam channels; they believe the propaganda model is expanding. I got my first Twitter spam the other day.

Leading edge marketers know the propaganda model, and therefore marketing as we know it, is obsolete. The newest, coolest, most attractive charities, for example, may not even have an agency. They can't afford the mass media - they can't afford print! - and why would they? They have internet media and they use it in such a way that everything they do is marketing.

When your products are actually good and everything you do is marketing - who needs advertising?

[James Cherkoff]

Thanks Brad, I love that. As ever, telling it like it is! ;-)

[Shan]

Very interesting post! hmm

[jackson]

Thanks we all need this plugin!

[James Cherkoff]

Hey Jackson, like I say, at least there's a future in it... ;-)

[ElliottMcclainDS]

Every target market is a 'community.' The death of advertising is inevitably twisted into Advertising 2.0. For every real problem, there is an imaginary solution. Marketers are used to selling things that suck. Intriguingly, marketers have a self-preservational blind spot which prevents them from seeing that they have become as obsolete as commercial TV

[James Cherkoff]

Thanks Elliott, wow, you sound pretty sceptical - so you think marketing is dead?