Godin and Penn say the big Amen!
It’s almost as if some spy went and told Seth Godin and Christopher Penn what I was saying about them when I recorded Episode -2 last week. Each of them seems to have gone out of their way to underscore my point.
Seth talks about the importance of standing for something.
And Chris recommends Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels as a marketing guru.
In Seth’s case… his post aligns with what I said fairly neatly. When he writes about standing for something, he doesn’t talk about being ethically upstanding, merely consistent. But the simple fact is that the kind of consistency he recommends is a hallmark of the ethically mature. And the extreme of inconsistency is the mark of the shyster.
And as I said in the podcast, Seth doesn’t make his point as if from a position atop some “Mr. Ethics” pedestal. But this particular post is perfectly consistent with the theme of respect for the customer, a leitmotif running through all Seth’s work.
Then there’s Chris Penn.
Oy!
My point about Chris in the podcast was that I don’t see in him the sort of broad concern for the human condition that I detect in Godin and see epitomized in Drucker.
And Chris didn’t merely reinforce my point, but almost parodied it, recommending Goebbels as “your go-to guy” for how to do fear marketing.
Here are Chris and John Wall in last week’s Marketing Over Coffee:
Chris: …it’s one of those things in the marketing world people really really really don’t like to talk about, because it’s almost taboo, but if you go and read the works of Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi propagandist, and stuff like that and stuff like that, and go back and read what he did and how he did it and stuff like that, he’s basically the almost the father of fear marketing. In the sense that you know you need to pick, you need to artificially divide people into groups, you need to pit those groups against each other, you need to have a villain and a scapegoat of some kind so that you get these archetypes of drama that work incredibly well for motivating people to do what you want them to do. And if you’ve decided that’s part of your marketing strategy, Goebbels is the go-to guy if you really want to take those tactics on. If you obviously if it comes out that you’ve been using Nazi propaganda books as the—
John: —foundation of your marketing strategy—
Chris: —exactly, you may have some backlash there. But—
John: —that’s the kind of information your competitors will get about you and so—
Chris: Exactly.
John: —as part of their campaign.
Chris: Best to keep those books at home, guys.
John: Or read them at the library when, and don’t check them out. These days I think there’s no security left on that… once it makes your list it’s on the list.
Chris: exactly…
To his credit, Chris has responded to an email he received from someone who had the same concern about all this that I have. But sadly, his response doesn’t convince me he understands the gravity of recommending Goebbels. In particular, both the podcast and Chris’s response suggest that John and Chris fail to see the distinction between marketing segmentation and the “artificially dividing people into groups” that was the linchpin of Goebbels’s work. Distinguishing between cost-conscious and style-conscious consumers is hardly the same as dividing humankind into a master race and a people worthy to be stuffed into ovens.
October 7th, 2008 at 2:20 pm
Goebbels isn’t about market segmentation as much as it is about using fear to market. That’s a really, really important distinction. Fear is one of the most primal emotions and one of the easiest to market with, as well as one of the easiest to transmute into anger and hatred. That’s what makes understanding his work so important - to know how this is done, so that you know when it’s being done TO you.
Lest we think this is consigned to the dustbin of history, it’s happening right now, all over the world. Georgians vs. Russians, Darfur, and even Republicans and Democrats in the United States, if you listen to some of the election rallies when partisans are screaming “Kill him!” about the opposition candidate.
We are always only a small step away from bringing Goebbels out of the grave and making use of his ideas again. If we don’t study them carefully, we’ll all fall victim once more, and the cost will again be unthinkably inhumane.
October 7th, 2008 at 4:59 pm
As Chris said in his follow up post, the focus of the discussion was using fear to market. Only by understanding how these tactics work, can we defend against them.
As you said in your podcast, Mr. Godin stays at a higher altitude, not covering the detailed tactics. You may look at this as his making more general statements about “good and bad” marketing and the human condition, or academics will say that this is to ensure his books have as long a shelf life as possible. We talk about and live on the front line, which is why we like to talk about HOW things are done.
There’s a huge gap between what everyone believes is right and what actually gets done. Stanley Milgram discusses in his “Obedience to Authority” how small acts of cruelty can escalate out of control. You may hold Drucker up as your Patron Saint but when you select a link that says we recommend Nazi techniques, you practice Goebbels.