« Nice reference | Main | Google Chase Scene »

March 10, 2005

Liars, cheats, quacks, spies and other noble professions

What do you do for a living? How do you feel about it? Well, if you're a business person and you've been reading the blogsphere lately you might begin to wonder.

First, it's bad enough that all the job titles in the world are getting distorted with gobbledegook like a "Certified Hotel Specialist" or "Customer Experience Agent."

But now even the regular old careers that we thought we understood are under duress:

• Marketing: did you know that all marketers are liars? According to Seth Godin's new book, if they are any good they had better be. So much for the first part of my career.
• Venture capital. I guess it comes as no surprise that Venture Capitalists trying to buy shares in your start-up are cheats no better than those who bought Manhattan for $28 worth of beads and trinkets. So much for the current part of my career.
• Sales: it seems that great salespeople are quack doctors. Just met with a salesperson whom I truly respect and he said that his job was to "Comfort the Afflicted and Afflict the Comfortable."
• Market research: these folks that we all used to rely on so much are no better than spies and voyuers who now want to read our minds with Neuromarketing (heck, even the sweet, lovable, innocent folks at Google are at it with desktop search.)

Gee whiz. Makes you wonder if you should bother getting up in the morning ;-)

NOT ME. I want to say I am proud of being part of all this. I just met with a company putting together the job description for their open head of marketing position. And it was inspiring. They described it as VP of Marketing for the American Dream. Being the chief preacher for entitlement to a better way. More on this company later - but I think they are on to something. For all of the above, if your product or service really is valuable and really is beneficial work hard to find the people who could benefit the most, then sing out, strong loud and proud. And add fuel to the fire to make it happen!

Posted by johnza at March 10, 2005 05:41 PM

Trackback Pings

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.geekfishing.net/cgi-bin/mt-tb.cgi/1399

Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Liars, cheats, quacks, spies and other noble professions:

» Seth Says All Marketers Are Liars, I Say Most Marketers Are Beggars from Crossroads Dispatches
Looking forward to Seth Godin's new book, All Marketers Are Liars (excerpt, book blog). I was tempted to say All Marketers Are Beggars, but I think some prove that statement wrong. I have noted time and time again that most [Read More]

Tracked on March 11, 2005 02:26 PM

Comments

Post a comment