Let’s start with this statement from the #1 marketing blog on earth, posted on September 15th: “Hint: They started Google in the middle of the dot com [sic] melt down [sic].”
Hint: no they didn’t.
The dot-com meltdown I lived through and worked through and remember ran from late 2000 until around mid-2003. So the “middle” would be mid-2001. But let‘s be generous and say it was 2000.
Now, let’s go to the source - Google’s own version of its history. “Started” in 1996, named “Google” in 1997.
This is the second time, at least, Seth Godin has made this claim. I would guess there are likely more instances. Unchallenged.
There are factual errors, and then there is pretzel logic. Here is an example of the latter, posted August 27th.
“Radio ads used to be live, personal and spoken by an individual. TV ads used to feature actual people, demonstrating something, usually live….”
Some of them used to be. Some still are. And we used to make fire by rubbing sticks in a cave. We have evolved.
“One by one, the mass marketers have insisted on robocalling, spamming, jingling and lying their way into our lives.”
Not really. You might not have heard of the do-not-call list, but it has been very effective in reducing cold calls. And spamming is the domain of individual rogues and hackers, not mass marketers. Unless you are referring to the spam text ads that surround my e-mail screen, courtesy of those heroes from Google (see lead paragraph).
“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.”
For the first part of that sentence, do a search on “number of Facebook and MySpace members.” For the second, search “targeted marketing.”
“The irony, of course, is that an organization with guts can go in the opposite direction and win.”
That wouldn’t be ironic. Based on the way this argument is laid out, it would be required. Although I’m not sure what “guts” has to do with it. “Strategy” is more appropriate.
Anyway, it‘s what marketers have been trying to do these past several years. Since shortly after the dot-com meltdown.
You can flee, but you can’t hide.
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FUNNY STUFF…New York Life just closed a user-generated contest and will pick ten submitted ads as winners to be used on its website. The ten winners receive NOTHING.
