by John Eberhard

I have been involved in marketing for 25 years. For a number of those years I worked as a Marketing Director or VP Marketing for a series of companies. For the past six years I’ve had my own company doing marketing services for clients all over the US.

You may have seen my recent two part articles series entitled “Anti-Marketing.” (Thank you to all who responded with positive feedback on those articles.) In that series I took a whimsical approach to a very real problem, which is the tendency in some in positions of power to try to stop marketing from happening.

So in this article I want to talk about what I think is the proper attitude that one should have as a business owner or marketing person.

First of all I think it is important to realize a couple of things:

1. As a person sending out marketing communications, you are cause.
2. As cause, you are senior in importance to someone trying to stop you from communicating.
3. There is nothing wrong with marketing a product or service. Marketing is not only OK to do, it is vital not only for the survival and prosperity of your company, but for the economy as a whole. You should not in any way feel like you have to apologize, or ask for permission to communicate.
4. Be bold and remember that you have every right to communicate your marketing message via whatever channels exist.
5. When large and powerful companies like Twitter, Google and Facebook take steps to stop you from delivering your marketing message, I think it is right and proper for you, not to get intimidated and feel guilty or that you have to apologize, but to be persistent and find ways to deliver your marketing communication anyway. This may take the form of finding ways to continue to deliver your marketing communication via the medium that tried to stop you, or it may take the form of moving to another medium.
6. In the near term on planet earth, whenever you communicate, there will always be people who will try to stop you from communicating.
7. Right now my perception is that the economy is not going well, despite pronouncements by the government that the recession ended several years ago and things are looking up. My sense is that many people today are still reluctant to spend money, both individuals and in businesses. The government isn’t helping, with laws and regulations that place a greater burden on the public. As marketers we can do our part to help this situation by delivering our marketing communications and creating want for our products or services, thus making people more interested and willing to spend money.
8. Is part of the anti-Marketing sentiment due to over-saturation of the public with marketing communication? Definitely. The solution to this for marketers is not to be intimidated and apologize and back off, but to continue to communicate your message, and to make that message more effective. You make it more effective by knowing the needs and wants and buttons of your target public, usually by surveying them.
9. Be persistent, continue to find ways to get your message out there, and be a howling, marketing success!