
The Elephant is Not its Trunk: Stop fooling yourself about marketing - ahoyhere
http://slash7.com/2009/12/11/the-elephant-is-not-its-trunk/
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potatolicious
Some salient and insightful points - but hard to reach because of all of the
shameless anti-geek stereotyping (coming from an alleged geek no less).

Protip: When trying to convince a bunch of programmers that you're right,
painting them with a broad, stereotypical brush is generally not helpful to
your cause, like:

 _"But only stupid people fall for marketing"_

 _"Please tattoo your name in binary on your forehead. It would make social
interaction ever so much more functional."_

 _"I failed Art class because my teacher took exception to me pointing out
that her grading formula was calculated incorrectly!"_

 _"Geeks tend to think that marketing is nothing but deception."_

... etc. I've met _very_ few people, computer geek or otherwise, who actually
think/talk like this. By filling your article with caricatures and stereotypes
like these, you're simply reducing the ability for people to identify with it
(not to mention being insulting to the reader's intelligence).

There are some good insights in the article - but I do not think these points
are as mind-shattering to the average geek as the author seems to believe.
Marketing is not intrisically scummy and scammy? You don't say! Marketing need
not be deceptive? What a concept! Marketing can be honest about its products?
Woaaaaaah, duuude.

~~~
misuba
>"I do not think these points are as mind-shattering to the average geek as
the author seems to believe. Marketing is not intrisically scummy and scammy?
You don't say! Marketing need not be deceptive? What a concept!"

So all you really have is a different set of stereotypes about geeks than the
author has. Who's right?

I'm starting to think the question "what is a geek" is the ultimate elephant
of our time - no two geeks anywhere are feeling the same body part. (No jokes,
please.) We all mistake our own local, small sample sets for the totality, and
anyone who tries to make a general assertion just gets picked apart by a
million people who have exceptions to bring up.

It's distressing to me, because we need powerful marketing conversations, and
conversations that are all about exceptions aren't very powerful.

~~~
forensic
>I'm starting to think the question "what is a geek" is the ultimate elephant
of our time

The very definition of geek tends to include words like "non-conformist" and
"totally focused on some tiny tiny niche that no one else knows anything
about"

~~~
misuba
That's the crux of the problem, yeah. We're like Tolstoy's line about
families: normal people are are all just normal, but geeks are all weird in
ways different enough to prevent us from having any kind of collective self-
definition. Which leaves the job of defining who we are to others, who
inevitably get it wrong.

------
csmeder
"Geeks are used to being smart and thinking about things, so they assume that
if they hold an opinion, there must be a smart and thoughtful reason for it.
Everybody on the face of the planet does this little Post-Hoc Justification
Dance a million times a day, but geeks are used to being proved right by
outside circumstances. So they believe it even more than other people."

I agree 100%, the more you realize you do this the better your company will be
in the long run.

------
SapphireSun
Heh, she's marketing marketing. I think my brain exploded. A lot of other
threads are taking issue with her style and some of her points but you're
really missing the point. She's trying to make marketing sound like something
you want to do and dispel impressions of it that I know that I (and some of my
friends however small a sample that may be) had at one point. It's not about
logical implications, it's about creating an amenable atmosphere. Can you see
yourself doing marketing? If not, then this might be an article you should
read.

On the other hand, I would hope that any serious entrepreneurs on HN would
already have grasped the point that marketing is good for business, so it
might be a bit redundant.

------
viraptor
To be honest, I don't believe much from that article... No, not the things
that the author writes. I mean the general image of marketing. It's like I
would talk about software that does everything you want and never crashes. It
would be a really nice thing if it existed outside of some completely
separated mini-universe.

"If people don’t like reading about unicorn tears on the sales site, there’s
no way they’re going to like the book. [...] Only one person has ever taken
advantage of the 30-day refund."

Yes - that's because people are a) lazy, b) trying to justify their choices.
They did not bother to return the book; they got it as a present; they resold
it on ebay; etc. etc.

Marketing in real world that we walk through every day is about selling you as
many products as possible as fast as possible. That's how the performance is
measured typically. That's why it doesn't matter anymore if a real person
calls you. It's cheaper to do an automated call to 100 times more people,
because someone will respond. That's why spam works!

"marketing is about support" may work for a 1-person shop. Sure - you will get
the information you need, because that person knows his business. Then at the
size of ~100 people there will be a buffer of 2 managers between him and the
standard worker - each manager with their own decisions and measured by
performance. They know that there's a support department and they know what
it's for - answering the questions about the shit people bought. That's why
you'll get a call to ask you whether you want to upgrade your service from a
person who doesn't know what they're talking about.

Both marketing people and programmers have the same problem - there are loads
of drones in their business. It would be foolish to judge marketing by the
article's author and it would be foolish to judge programming by DJB's code.
They're one in a million. And the rest will work great together - one side
will create millions of lines of crappy code and the other will sell it like
it was the best thing since sliced bread.

The author may be describing correctly her own environment and her workplace,
but... please, stop fooling yourself about marketing ;)

~~~
ahoyhere
Hey, I'm on my iPhone so I will write a more thorough response later, but --

My book is an ebook, not a physical object. I offer a very strong refund
policy and getting a refund is as easy & instant as emailing the address
listed on the site & book. Typical return rates for other ebooks range fro
3-5%, based on my convos with other people selling info products.

Also, when I say "support," I mean it in the traditional sense. I don't mean
"customer support" as in "answering emails." Remember that that term predates
that particular meaning.

Support, as I explain in my article, means helping people. I create products,
first, with a goal of helping my customer make themselves/their lives better.
That is my guiding purpose.

Then, with my marketing, I help them decide - really - if the product is for
them or isn't for them. I make it extremely clear who the product will help, I
don't cast as wide a net as possible.

Helping people realize "this product is NOT for me" is respectful of them &
their time.

------
trafficlight
She lost me at "Or their cute little taily-wailies."

~~~
teej
Then you missed the part where she says she doesn't water down her marketing
messages, because it filters out people who won't be satisfied buying her
product. Doing that lead to a < 0.1% return rate on her Javascript ebook.

------
robotron
Why did you change the title when posting it here. Odd choice of wording...

~~~
weaksauce
I would guess that the original is too long for the length filter.

