Talk to Me

One of my strengths is the ability to write advertising messages that don't sound like typical advertising messages.

They sound like one person talking to another person.

Real Communication.

Word of Mouth Marketing with a Bigger Mouth.

Last week the owner of a business that he started 50 years ago repeatedly told me that he really liked the commercials I wrote. I've heard that over and over. And I'm proud of that.

Just because I work in mass media, doesn't mean the message should be for the masses. Seth wrote about this recently:

The first law of mass media

Organizations will work tirelessly to de-personalize every communication medium they encounter.

Radio ads used to be live, personal and spoken by an individual.
TV ads used to feature actual people, demonstrating something, usually live.
Phone calls involved a live speaker, talking, with permission, to another person.
Email used to be honest interactions between consenting adults.
Facebook pages (and Wikipedia, too) were built by people, not staffs.
Twits came from real people, and so did instant messages.

One by one, the mass marketers have insisted on robocalling, spamming, jingling and lying their way into our lives. The pronoun morphs from "you" to "me" to "us" to "the corporation" ...

The public works tirelessly to flee to actual interactions between real people, and our organizations work even more diligently (and with more leverage) to corporatize and anonymize the interactions.

The irony, of course, is that an organization with guts can go in the opposite direction and win.

My name is Seth Godin and I approved this message.

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