Lighten Up! (part of cluetrainplus10)

“Dying is easy, comedy is hard.” Sir Donald Wolfit

As part of cluetrainplus10 celebrating the 10th anniversary of the Cluetrain Manifesto, I am blogging about the 21st Cluetrain thesis: “Companies need to lighten up and take themselves less seriously. They need to get a sense of humor.”

I feel like I should make a joke here, but I really can’t think of one.

I’m a marketer.  For better or worse, I’m part of one of those “companies” the Cluetrain Manifesto talks about.  (Maybe THAT’S the joke right there!)

A lot of the work our company does is serious.  Being serious is good.  We use the term serious as a synonym for professional or focused, and as an opposite to amateurish or unworthy of consideration.  ”Oh yeah, I’d use their software, those guys are SERIOUS about their business, and therefore they make good software.”

However, there is a line.  A line between taking your work seriously and taking yourself TOO seriously.  And unfortunately it is all to often crossed by well-meaning company employees, usually in the pursuit of doing a good job.

In marketing, we use terms like brand and message.  We use these terms as stand-ins, as placeholders for being able to have direct conversations and relationships with our customers.  And that’s okay.  We CAN’T have a personal relationship with every customer, but that doesn’t mean we can’t do good by each and everyone one of them.  Therefore, we should take these things called brand and message seriously. We should think and work on our brand and our message.  It should be a reflection of our product and our promise, and it should be something we can stand behind.  The should be something our customers can point to and say “yeah, I get that.  I’ll buy that.”  Literally.

The problem comes when we start mistaking the brand and the message for the actual relationship.  We even start to treat our brands and our messages as more important than the relationship with our customers.  And that’s when they start laughing at us.

Modern marketing is silly.  It just is.  Comercials and press releases and colourful pictures in magazines and banners on web pages and branded Facebook groups… it’s all pretty ridiculous.  It’s artifical.  But that’s okay.  A lot of the best things in life are created to amuse and thrill us.

A lot of great things are made-up things.  I love movies.  I love roller coasters.  And I LOVE great advertising.  I really do.  But I try not to take any of them too seriously.

The line is crossed when we, as marketers, start to buy our own BS.  I’ve encountered this attitude with some marketers, this incredulous disbelief that anyone would not buy into the promise of THEIR brand.  It’s like you just called their baby ugly.

If you’re a marketer, I have two words for you: lighten up.  At some point, someone is going to laugh at your carefully constructed brand.  The very best thing you can do is laugh along with them.

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