I believe that every lazy marketing manager is slowly creating their own special personal hell in the afterlife.
Lord knows, they are putting enough of us through hell up here, when they use the same old boring online techniques and promotions.
The Internet is such a wonderful and powerful beast, that it should be inspiring you to stretch your imaginations and try new things.
Online marketing needs to stop just using online channels, and begin to really USE online channels.
G-U-R-U is the new way to spell “Clueless”
Everyone has heard all about the huge amounts of people self-proclaiming themselves as “Social Media Gurus” over the past few years.
And I bet everyone has met one of these people in real life too.
Almost without exception, these “gurus” are clueless, unimpressive self-promoters who have grabbed on to the latest thing that they think will get them some attention, respect and acclaim.
So many people added this title to their twitter profiles, in 2009, that it became hard to find someone without the word “guru”.
This fairly recent post from BL Ochman talks about the number of people still doing this. You can go to tweepsearch.com and confirm this for yourself too.
It is all so sad and it has created a situation that the word “guru” has lost the reverence that it once had.
The definition of the word shows it was once an honorable title. But no longer. It now draws ridicule, mistrust and scorn in the western world and online.
The odd thing is that a majority of these so called “gurus” have chosen this title for themselves.
This is the reason it has lost it’s former meaning, as the title is one that needs to be placed on you by others, who value your worth and the contribution you can make.
Because these titles were self-bestowed, the wielders of this awesome new rank often made some fantastically stupid mistakes due to their own lack of knowledge. For a great list of some of these, check out this post from mashable
Thankfully, rise of the social media gurus seems to have reached its peak, because there’s a new, contrary, position gaining momentum. It’s the “who the hell are these people to call themselves experts” movement. Posts like this one and this reflect that sentiment.
But the term is forever tarnished, in my opinion.
That’s OK though, because I like the word “sensei” better anyway.
I am also lurking on the internet in places other than here. (and in a VERY non-guru kind of way).
You can check out these places:
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| FB Fan page | Flickr | Google Buzz |
When World Of Warcraft & Nintendo join forces, it can only end badly.
The collaboration shown in my comic has not happened, of course – but if it did, it would be sure to fail miserably.
I think that trying to have the Wii users and WOW users work togethor on a common platform would be harder to orchestrate than world peace.
Unfortunately, this collaboration could well be something that is on a gaming marketing executive’s “brainstorm” list somewhere.
Lets face it, worse ideas have been pitched by marketers of games – and some have actually been followed up on!
Some recent failed gaming marketing ploys include Sony’s Failed PSP Viral Marketing Stunt and recently, EA’s “Sin to Win” contest for Dante’s Inferno
There are also too many examples of cross-promotional merchandise that marketers have pushed onto the consumer public.
Check out these 6 Crappy Items Marketed Towards Gamers, such as :
– Caffeinated Soap
– Video Game Champion Glove
– Game Fuel (which was Mountain Dews attempt to cash in on Halo 3)
Crosspromotion and co-branding is a way of life in marketing and many online games (I am looking at you, Second Life) even include branding opportunities within them.
This can sometimes be very successful.
But in my view, even when they succeed, it still feels like a sell-out.
