Marketing Quackery

The QUACK may be related to a duck but in the world of healthcare "quackery" is a dangerous practice because it betrays trust and is a manipulation.  This is where the word QUACKERY came from and still largely exists.  There is a great 3 minute primer produced by Edward Zuniga and his team regarding what quackery is, before I begin to apply the term to more broader marketing practice well beyond that of quackery found in medicine.

It was Luisana who introduced me to CRO or Conversion Rate Optimization and when I look at what people like Chris Bishop who coined the term, I enjoy both the human being who shares like Luisana does, as I do the originator of specialized thinking such as Bishop :

CRO: A Shiny New Acronym for Content Marketing, PR and SEO 

https://www.marchpr.com/blog/pr/2013/08/content-marketing-conversion-optimization/

Those in the marketing field or branding field that represent the best exponents of it are who I want to gravitate to learning it.  I also pay attention to those whose voice comes through as human and their passion is clearly a part of their own learning.  It becomes weird when people talk about content marketing and they are using it as content marketing - which is akin to eating dog food and not the independence of not having a dog in the race.  Eventually the race to sell through content marketing descends to the level of marketing quackery - and the only way I know that is if the quackery passes my smell test.  A part of my learning journey is to improve my sensory abilities - and I want to develop a dog nose for sniffing out the best quality.

If I am marketing rather than learning about marketing then that is what the problem of content marketing is. We may expect marketing as a rite of commercial passage but most traditional marketing is not engaged in the human voice and it no longer operates behind closed doors, people see marketing as magic trick or even a manipulation - and this is when marketing begins to get a bad rap. 

Yet when I see a passionate professional, I see that person raise themselves well beyond the status of marketing, and these people are at the opposite end of the continuum where marketing quacks are on the other end.  When I came across James May and his Brandchills project - I can view the video's on Brandchills in conjunction with my learning of marketing and appreciate what the best in branding agencies bring to create quality ads.  At the same time I appreciate people like Sergio Zyman who says marketing is about selling and an award winning ad is of no use if it does not sell.  An award winning ad however does serve as an education - if our intent is 100% learning.

Marketers who talk in the human voice do not have to talk like simpletons, the intent of servant leadership is when any profession is serving the bigger picture and not just itself.