Hugh MacLeod
Cartoons drawn on the back of business cards
December 30, 2004
Is it just me, or is the term “Authentic Voice” starting to get annoying?
It’s already starting to sound like a buzzword…
The word “conversation” in a post-Cluetrain marketing context is also starting to get on my tits, even if I’m as guilty as anyone for using it.
I'm a cartoonist.
I sell limited-edition prints.
I wrote a book.
I'm CEO of Stormhoek USA, which markets South African wine in the States.
I also draw private commissions.
Prints |
Opening | Current |
|---|---|---|
Bluetrain |
$900 | |
We Need to Talk |
$650 | |
Portfolio #2 |
$300 | |
NY NY |
$275 |
Lets see, buzzword;
silly phrase : yup
meaningless phrase or redefinition of words : yup
marketing : yup
stating the obvious : yup
attempting to influence people with its use : yup
BINGO! marketing buzzword.
(what, cynical, me?)
Is getting on your own tits some intellectual form of auto-erotica?
Ooo, I’m already annoying! I love to be annoying. The pathetic catch is that most of the people I write for don’t find it annoying. They need to hear the obvious because it’s new to them. Geez, reading a blog is new to a lot of them. They’re not up there on the leading edge with you guys. They’re stuck in a cubicle somewhere afraid to write “I” or use a real verb.
When “authentic voice,” “deeper meaning” and “love,” etc. are used within the context of doing business, it’s automatically rife with in insincerity.
I wish for an end to the evangelical, high-five-and-a-hug approach to marketing. It’s embarrassing.
I noticed immediately from the mighty penis cartoon that circumcision is obvious. Perhaps there is a feeling “issue” here?
Nothing is as bad, however, as Feria’s “The Color of Your Voice” campaign.
Er, isn’t “buzzword” a bit of a buzzword?
We need to conduct a war on buzzwords and over used catchphrases.
Let’s begin with the phrase ‘on my tits’. I’ve read that phrase so many times today, I’m bag deep and crazier than a bag of hammers.
A war on the use of the word conversation would be good.
Followed by a war on ‘the war on ______”
Authentic Voice=Genuine Naugehyde.
Markets are chats. Hire a Trunk Monkey for yours.
But I love “on my tits”!
=(
To me the worst is “markets are conversations” — the original phrase’s earnest intent, coupled with loose interpretation = parody.
Seems to me that words, like brands, are a form a shorthand. If they arent backed up the author/designer’s own experience, own insight… they suck.
Brian, I’m intrigued by your comments.
Maybe you’d prefer the “We think the target market is made of idiots” voice?
Seriously, the good old-fashioned pitch is honest in its dishonesty.
This new world of branded conversations – that threatens to explode on the scene at any moment – is murkier indeed.
David, I don’t think there are ‘targets’ anymore. At least in the traditional demographic sense. The idea that the target is an idiot arises right from the methodology of message marketing. Low common denominator and such. Age and gender. But if the Internet proves anything at all, the target, like God, is dead. As a customer’s interest in ‘things’ fragments — it’s always been that way anyway, but we’re just getting around to seeing it, because of the net — the message or conversation or whatever you want to call it will need to be modified — call it voice, brand, a human face whatever you like, will need to be of a more generalist bent. Chasing the nanocharacter is off. Literalism is outre. There’s nothing new in this. Advertising — and that’s what we’re on about here — will drone on. But that which will succeed will be that which involves, where benefits are implied and the customer engaged — at all levels. That’s why young Hugh ‘On my tits’ Macleod here is being so bloody brilliant with his Hughtrain. Marketers have become engineers of human soulessness. Time for a little spunk. Your tits or mine.
“Markets are chats. Hire a Trunk Monkey for yours.”
“But if the Internet proves anything at all, the target, like God, is dead.”
“Marketers have become engineers of human soulessness.”
Damn, man. You’ve got the skills of a good copywriter.
By the way, how exactly does the internet prove that targets, like God, is dead?
that targets, like God, are dead?
Let’s acknowledge that we have the power to turn a word, any word, into a cliche…it’s part of the skill set (oops!) we’ve developed over the last half century. (Thank you, Mssrs. Ogilvy and Burnett!)
But words initially have power because they name experiences, and it’s those experiences that we keep affirming (sorry) with the words. So, when we hear something that we experience as an “authentic voice,” that experience is important because it’s distinct from what we hear in most of the cultural noise that surrounds us. Forget what you call it, it’s different, and very appealing when contrasted with the norm.
I might allude here to infants and bathing, but, well…
David, I will get back to the targets are dead line when I get a chance.
Not that it’s long and involved…
…think of ‘the target’ as a composite, a sketch of the consumer as a captive member of an audience, gleaned from the recon of research (very much a controlled conversation)…with an arrow (the message) hitting him/her in the heart or ear or eyeballs…that target has had his her hands and feet freed (by virtue not only of the internet but all digital media) so not only is the target moving, the target has plucked the arrow from its brain and is sending the arrow back over the wall with a big flaming gob of shite and hay on the end.
So The King can send his messengers out with more bows and arrows but the messengers will be merely slinging into a single dead corpse, that of the composite dummy, a dummy of their own making, from which the hay and shite was pulled by those 20,000 males 18 – 25 plus or minus ten percent who would occasionally visit the dummy, inhabit the dummy’s body, touch the dummy, be the dummy.
The spirits have now moved on to the commons or the tavern and now the messenger has to go back to the King with the news. The dummy is dead. Long live the dummy.
The ‘target’ only exists when tied to the post or shackled to the wall. You could say that the target is now a moving target. But it was only ever a creation of marketeers in the first place. Like a composite police sketch. (Why do these sketches never look anything like the apprehended criminal?) And so much of the targetting and profiling methodology springs from the same demented ethos of the pseudosciences, the school of controlled sampling and reductive composition — the psychoalchemists emerging from Marketing 404 — Brain not found — still failing to understand that targetting in an increasingly fragmented enviroment — where the crowds are dispersing of their own free will — is tantamount to firing kumquats from a catapult at receeding chimeras.
Plunk the kumquat on a stick and call it a dummy.
The target, like God, is dead. Or, perhaps, like Nietzsche, I am mad from syphilis and I’m talking to a horse. You’re not a horse, David, are you?
No, I’m not a horse. But I like horses.
Authentic Voices Discuss Authentic Voice
Hugh MacLeod asked recently, “Is it just me, or is the term ‘Authentic Voice’ starting to get annoying? It’s already starting to sound like a buzzword… The word ‘conversation’ in a post-Cluetrain marketing context is also starting to get on…
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