Is this really 'marketing"?

Plenty of people in the non-IM/SEO marketing world who are also full of ****, bud. They're not always completely full of ****, but I digress. Even the best of them sometimes end up talking out of their ass somewhat from time to time, and make their advice and expertise sound a whole lot more useful than it really is.

Take Seth Godin for example. Pretty sure he's fairly well-respected. Smart guy. Has plenty of good insights. Doesn't mean that he doesn't ever fall to the temptation of making broad, sweeping truthy sounding statements that aren't necessarily true.

For instance, in his 2005 book "All Marketers Are Liars", he talks about early adopters. He makes the claim that "Early adopters are techno geeks and nerds who go out and buy the latest gizmo". Sounds reasonable. You want to believe this doncha? And so many people did. However, what if I were to tell you that there are also plenty of people who are early adopters, not because they're techno geeks and nerds, but because they fancy themselves as such? Plenty of tech savvy consumers understand that newly launched gadgets often have glitches and bugs, and so they don't necessarily go out and buy the latest ones. Go browse a few tech/gadget forums and you'll see what I mean. Furthermore, there are plenty of people out there with the latest gadgets that have no idea how they actually work and really have very little understanding of technology. Wait till the next Macbook product line comes out, or till the next Android device comes out, and seek out the early adopters. Ask them whether they know what kernel MacOS is based off of, or what programming languages Android apps can be programmed in. See how many actually know the answer.

And so it becomes "early adopters are tech gadget enthusiasts, but not all tech gadget enthusiasts are techno geeks and nerds, and not all techno geeks and nerds are early adopters." Not exactly what Godin was implying now was it?

I have a more recent example too. Seth Godin started his own publishing gig through Amazon. One of his recommended books is "Zarella's Hierarchy of Contagiousness: The Science, Design, and Engineering of Contagious Ideas", by Dan Zarella, who is "supposed" to be a reasonably authoritative figure on social/viral media (at least according to his background and experience). Sounds enticing, right? Even the title makes it sound authoritative. "Science", and "Engineering". Already, you might be starting to feel giddy like you've stumbled upon a hidden gem. Except you might be disappointed if you have some sort of formal background in the actual sciences. For instance, Dan tries to compare the spread of ideas with the spread of diseases. He borrows a term from epidemiology, "R0", to describe how contagious an idea is. Supposedly, that makes it "sciency". He describes how infectious diseases have a R0 higher than 1, and how even the best contagious ideas he's observed have R0's less than 1. Sounds sciency don't it? Until you realize that R0 isn't really a good measure of how infectious something is - it's more of a threshold to determine whether an infectious pathogen will die off on its own or not. If R0 > 1, human intervention is probably needed to stop it from spreading. If R0 < 1, it's likely to die off on its own. There are plenty of criticisms of R0 by actual accredited mathematicians doing research in University departments. I'll even lead you to the first one. Just do a google scholar search for "perspectives on the basic reproductive ratio". It's a bit of a dry read, but it provides a lot of good insight on what R0 is actually useful for. Feel free to look up the credentials of its authors and what other articles they've written. Quite impressive. So really, when Zarrella observes that every "idea viruses" he has come across has had a R0 < 1, he's saying that he's never come across an "idea virus" that can spread like a successful biological pathogen. That's not science. That's just an observation. So why even compare "idea viruses" to pathogens? I can't be sure, but I suspect it's because it's an anchoring effect. I suspect that he probably hopes that by confusing the reader with technical "sciency" sounding terms and by making it look like there's a huge gap between "idea viruses" and pathogens that he'll scare them into going "oh ****! we're screwed now! better listen to what this guy says, he probably knows his stuff." Additionally, pathogens can often spread on their own passively. Not always the case with ideas. You can't sit next to/cough/bleed/sneeze/etc on someone, and magically transmit an idea into their heads. So naturally, there probably won't be as many "infections". Also, let's not forget that R0 is an estimate, and that there's more than one method of calculating it.

How's that for truthiness and science? An old adage comes to mind - "There's lies, damned lies, and statistics."

We can talk about more extreme cases as well. I'm sure over the course of your Advertising curriculum that you've heard time and time again about the virtues of social media. Plenty of full-service marketers out there who will claim that social media is good for your business because it generates "sharing" and "free advertising" because interactions show up on news feeds of friends of the person interacting with you. They talk up a storm about "engagement", etc., and make the whole thing sound like magic. When you think about it though, who the hell actually creeps through their news feed carefully cataloging and following what brands each of their friends "likes" or talks about? There is a specific kind of segment that does do this, but I'm sure there have been times when you've been made to feel like it's more lucrative than it really is. Furthermore, if your segment consists of a group of facebook addicts that have nothing better to do than to creep on Facebook all day instead of being productive, who's to say they can even afford to be loyal customers of your brand and produce positive net ROI? But the marketers don't always tell you that. They may not know what the hell they're doing either. They may try and get you a bunch of fans or likes on Facebook, and they may even do it legitimately. Doesn't mean it will actually do squat for your ROI (especially if you're a B2B firm).

Anyhow, just my 2 cents. I could be completely wrong.