One Of The Best Ways I Have Found to Balance Your Perspective On Digital Marketing & Advertising

I have a secret weapon in my battle to stay on top of what’s what in the zany world of digital marketing and advertising. (DMA for short).
I came across this weapon, more or less through the osmosis of having been in the marketing and advertising business since dinosaurs roamed the earth and cave art was all the rage.
When I started to investigate DMA several years ago at the request of a couple of clients who were looking at on-line options, all I really knew about it was what I was being told and that was that it was really the Next Big Thing.
At that time Facebook and LinkedIn were relatively new and had not developed their DMA to the degree that they have today. But the digital marketing community was selling it hard.
Of course, being a bit of a contrarian (in case you hadn’t noticed), all that did was make me skeptical. Around the same time, my daughter was giving me books like Social Media Is Bullshit and Trust Me I’m Lying and the insight contained in those books helped a lot. But I wanted more.

I Was A Man In Search Of A Guru

I remember very distinctly reading about this guy named Bob Hoffman in the comment stream of a question posed in the LI group “Step Into The Spotlight”. This is run by a lady named Tsufit, out of Toronto and is to this day, one of the best managed and most active groups in all of the Lumpy Kingdom.

I made a note of Bob Hoffman’s name and looked him up on Google. He is the owner of a marketing and advertising company in San Francisco, and he, like me, has been in this game since before the printing press was invented.
So I thought, OK, what’s this guy’s take on things?
Well it turns out that Bob Hoffman has, over the past several years, been less active in working on accounts and more active as a Contrarian Evangelist.
He travels the world speaking to companies, agency associations, art director and designer organizations, pretty much anybody who has a vested interest in understanding just what is going on in the world of DMA.
For the past two years plus I have been getting weekly emails from Bob Hoffman that have taken not so much a contrarian stance but more that of a brief 60 Minutes style exploration into one aspect or another of DMA.
Last week, in the He Said He Said post I do with my pal Phil Friedman, I actually used one of Bob’s Email newsletter verbatim to start a discussion on personal branding and what it means.
https://www.bebee.com/producer/@jim-murray/volume-28-wherein-grumpy-grouchy-ponder-whether-or-not-the-personal-brand-is-really-a-thing
But Bob’s interest in DMA goes much deeper than just contrary op/ed observations. He is working very hard, and using solid evidence to back his claims, to get people to genuinely understand how this segment of the advertising and marketing industry works.

Bob Is Showing Us Where The Bodies Are Buried

Simply by reading the DMA news in publications like Advertising Age, Campaign and AdWeek, then digging a little deeper into the companies who are actually doing nuts and bolts research on the issues that are making news, he has created a genuine body of criticism of the DMA industry.
A lot of what he finds ain’t pretty. But the simple fact is that it provides a much needed counterpoint to everything that the digital marketing community is pumping out.
Yes, it is contrarian in nature. That’s kinda why it appealed to me. Because one of the rules I have always lived by is that if you want to understand the truth about anything you need to look at as many sides of the issue as you can.

Worth Doing

My advice, to anyone who is using digital marketing or advertising to build their brand, or even anyone involved in building a personal brand in social media, is to bookmark this page, explore Bob’s various points of view on things and subscribe to his newsletter.
http://bobhoffmanswebsite.com/newsletters/
This is. IMHO, a necessity for anyone who wants to make smart decisions going forward into the world of DMA.
You can thank me later.

If your business has reached the point where talking to an experienced  communication professional would be the preferred option to banging your head against the wall or whatever, lets talk.

Download my free ebook Small Business Communication For The Real World here:
 https://onwordsandupwords.wordpress.com/2013/11/24/small-business-communications-for-the-real-world/
All my profile and contact information can be accessed here:

https://www.bebee.com/producer/@jim-murray/this-post-is-my-about-page



All content Copyright 2017 Jim Murray Onwords & Upwords Inc.

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