It's the End of Nothing As We Know It

I found the end of the internet just last night. Somehow I stumbled upon the very end. Sleeping is not something that comes very easy to me, so in my haste to waste (time, that is) I mistakingly thought that perhaps I flipped through entire chapters and somehow landed on the last page. So you know what I did, right? I backed up. I must have missed SOMETHING, right?

Aha. No amount of sleep deprivation will help to illuminate a path of golden virtue on the seemingly endless superhighway. That is my general conclusion. It didn't take me long to realize there are many 'stopping points' and there are vast quantities of duplicate content, content with zero value and overwhelmingly bad content.

Then, of course, there are some real gems out there, too.

It's actually a lot like people, if you think about it. It's so refreshing to come back from a social event after having meet for the first time someone you simply know will be a good friend. It's either that or it's simply refreshing to come back home after a social event knowing that you can climb into your comfy pajamas and fall onto the couch to watch some lively rendition of your office, The Office. Either way, it's all win-win.

That's the message for today. The older I get, the less things change. Take, for instance, the life of a marketer. Look at how things have changed since the days of standing on a soapbox outside of a train station, trying to pitch a product or sell a service. Promises are made, something sexy is sold, (seemingly) intimate connections are forged, money is collected, families are fed, people put on their jammies and go to bed.

During my own last late night adventures I was pondering this and again, I found the end. But I also found an interesting little graphic to explain the new nuances of the world of marketing advertisers. Because let's face it, we are all marketing something to someone at any given time, all the time. It's exhausting, trust me, but it won't help you sleep.

Dubbed "Neo-marketing," the author of the chart to your right, keys in on the fact that marketing needs to be more user and customer-centric, while "old-school marketing" offers more of a one-size-fits-all approach to making everyone happy with the same thing. User feedback is preferred over focus groups because everyone knows there is a bias in focus group data. The most compelling point of differentiation is the last. Indeed, it's all about YOU.

"A well-informed employee is the best salesperson a company can have." E. J. Thomas.

Take note that the quote and the chart were published far before the proliferation of social media and contemporary marketing techniques, illustrating nicely that the farther we travel, the less we see.

Now, go get some sleep!