 My wife loves cleaning tools.
I’m not saying she likes to clean – she just has a thing for the gear. Whenever we’re at the Home Depot, she’ll slow down as we walk by the vacuums. She’s been known to dial up the Home Shopping Network when they’re talking housewares. At various times I’ve come home to find a Swiffer with a ten-year supply of pads, two Twist-N-Wring mops, or a plastic power washer for the outside of the house. I didn’t even know our house was dirty, but now I can tell by the dried water streaks that in fact it was.
Don’t think I’m just picking on her without looking in the mirror. Drawers crammed with chargers, cables, outmoded PDA’s, and other barely-used tech toys are an electronic graveyard and dusty testament to my own peculiar weakness.
I don’t feel too bad about any of this though. At least I don’t feel alone.
For years I’ve seen companies enthusiastically throw money at new technologies, all too often with the misguided notion that the technologies were strategies.
When desktop publishing first emerged, managers thought secretaries could replace designers. Just push a button, right? In the 90’s it was all about CD’s. How many products can we convert to a CD? It doesn’t matter what, just do it. And then it was dot com – gotta do a dot com. And we all know how that turned out. Then it was streaming video. Web 2.0. Facebook. Twitter. The list goes on.
But these aren’t strategies. They’re tools. Dynamic, evolutionary, sometimes revolutionary and often practical, but tools nonetheless. Sure, you should know everything that’s in your toolbox, but as good marketers let’s first recognize the need and draw up a plan. THEN bring out the tools. Otherwise the money you throw is just going to go out the window.
Now excuse me while I take our new GPS-enabled upholstery steamer for a spin.
 And apparently it has been for quite some time.
I’ve worked in publishing for over 20 years, and for most of that time I bought into the notion that the Internet was the the main reason print media was in decline. The erosion of b2b magazines in particular coincided with the rise of the web, and as web 2.0 kicked in, those same magazines went into freefall.
A closer look, however, reveals that print has been in decline for over 60 years—ever since the rise of broadcast journalism. Consider this: In 1947 there were 140 newspaper subscriptions per 100 households. Today that number is less than 50, and it’s been in steady decline throughout those years (James Fallows, Atlantic Monthly). It seems that radio and especially TV are greater culprits than the Internet in causing the decline of print. They certainly have seniority.
Now what’s ironic about this is that the web—going strong since the early 90′s—still has a ton of sites that use type as their primary means of communication. The broadcast wave has been cresting for years (I know, broadcast has problems of its own – cable and all that). But while some rode the wave and others fought it, when this “interweb thing” came along, we all took a step backward by using the medium to create more print. I’m not saying there weren’t good reasons for this. After all, bandwidth, memory, processing speeds, and the like made Internet video a pretty tough call.
But today? Not so tough. Still, while online video has come on strong, plenty of my old media pals continue trying to make print work where video works better. They remain dedicated to fighting video with print. It’s just that they’ve moved the battle online. The best they seem to muster is video as illustration, but seldom, if ever, is video used on a b2b media website as the primary storytelling medium.
That’s been a losing proposition since WWII, and I see no reason for it to change. I guess I better change this blog to video!!
 I’m going to step away from the sort of things I usually write about to post something on a more personal note.
I live in Chicago, and throughout the year I see people waving flags. Take a drive down North Avenue or Division Street in July and you’ll see hundreds of cars festooned with the flag of Puerto Rico. It’s hard to miss a Mexican flag in May or September. And I can personally vouch for the bunting on our fence on July 4th.
So lately I’ve noticed a lot of red and white flags waving from peoples’ cars. I didn’t recognize the nationality right away, and I couldn’t figure out what holiday it was. I soon recognized it was the flag of Poland. Chicago has a huge Polish population. The oft-quoted statistic is that we have the second largest Polish population outside of Warsaw. So that little flag — a symbol of mourning for the loss of President Lech Kaczynski and nearly 100 other souls — brought far away news much closer to home.
I don’t know what point I’m trying to make with this post. I guess it’s that pain and sadness are diminished the more removed you are from a situation. To me, that plane crash was horrible. Still, in the end, it was just another tragic news story. But those flags reminded me that its impact is acutely felt by my neighbors, along with their family, friends and compatriots, and my heart goes out to the people of Poland.
 When my daughter was little and learning to read, she had a book that was composed of very simple words and short sentences. Pictures were interspersed within the sentences as stand-ins for the more complex words. To this day, our entire family remembers one sentence in particular. It comes up on a regular basis at family gatherings, and it always makes us laugh, just because it’s so silly and it reminds us of a special time. A (banana) is not a (lunchbox). That’s it — hey, our family’s an easy laugh.
Anyway, I was reminded of it while reading a blog post by Dana Oshiro on ReadWriteWeb. The title was “There is No Perfect VP of Sales and Marketing”. She wrote about key differences between sales and marketing, how the two are distinct and separate functions, and how a VP of Sales and Marketing is really doing the job of two people.
I’ve done both, and I have to agree — they’re two different jobs. And all too often, one is disrespected by the other. Marketers can be viewed as a sales support department. Salespeople might be viewed as tools of marketing. I did a little searching online, and it’s remarkable how acrimonious some of the discussions are. Often disrespectful, and sometimes just plain mean!
But think about marketing and sales as the banana and the lunchbox. (And no, I don’t care which is the banana and which one the lunchbox!) They’re about as different as it gets, but they’re both there for the same reason. They’re both there to see that your kid doesn’t go hungry.
Just a thought.
 I used to direct the annual strategic plan for a weekly news magazine. If you’ve kept even half an eye on media news, you can just imagine how some of those planning sessions went. At various times everything about our business would get dissected, analyzed, attacked or defended. It got down to such introspection as, “What are we, why are we here, and what is news?” Media Philosophy 101.
With the knowledge that we were an advertising-based business in print, online and with events, one person said we were a media company. Another (probably a marketer, though I don’t recall) chimed in, “We’re in the audience rental business!” A pretty interesting notion, if you think about it. Finally someone else, likely an editor, said, “We’re in the news business.”
That last comment launched us in a while new direction. To be specific, what exactly is news? A pretty simple question, but not necessarily an easy one to answer. Is it a matter of importance and impact? Location? The number of people who care? You’d be surprised a how long a group of newsies could kick something like this around.
Finally someone said, “It’s news if it’s news to me.” This didn’t resolve the discussion by any means, but, wow, talk about a statement pregnant with subjective meaning! “I’ll decide if it’s news.” It makes it a clear point of just why the web has become the media tool of choice for so many consumers.
But that’s not really the point here. What it’s also saying is that everything is news to someone. So when you see something posted for the seventh time today, remember, it’ll be the first time that a whole bunch of people will be seeing it. And even though it may not be important to you, it’s important to someone.
And if you’re a communicator, remember, there’s an audience out there for you. Somewhere.
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What is The Shortest Distance? The Shortest Distance is a blog about storytelling, integrated marketing strategies, social media, and the many ways they can work together to help people connect and businesses succeed.
Bruce is a seasoned marketing pro who has improved the performance of a variety of corporations by combining solid integrated marketing strategies with compelling content and leading-edge Web 2.0 tools.
His background in brand and product marketing, operations, management, design, publishing and sales, along with his classical training at the Kellogg Graduate School of Management, give him a 360º perspective on today's marketing opportunities.
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