Niko Herzeg Marketing

So last week I attented a marketing conference. It was a 2.o web type conference. Quite unremarkable from my point of view. However I did notice one thing. There was this lecture on landing pages. And it was jampacked. I had to sneak in and find a place against the back wall.

The speaker, bless him, tried to fight it off for as long as he could. At times he ignored questions regarding it. Keeping himself on message about the importance of research, insight and creative problem solving.

But the crowd wanted non of that. All they wanted was it: the checklist on how to build a landingpage in 6 / maybe 7 easy steps. How much copy to write, how to repeat the header of the adword ad on the page, how pictures work better…

How to, how to, how to, how…and no why or why not.

Now this could off course just be my mind creating patterns where there are non, but the fact that the people around me were talking about job openings and redundancies added to their attendance of the most practical lecture and only really paying attention when the list appeared, made me fearfull.

No more thinking outside the box, just ticking boxes on THE list, seemed to be taking over this groups thinking and behaviour.

Now off course they all could off been just interested in the art of great landing pages, yet asking a couple of people if they read guys like Bokardo on a regular basis to get more insight (just one of many and my personal fav), drew blank expressions and questions on whether or not I got the whole list down and if they could copy it.

In the last 18 months we have all had to look out for every pound/euro/dollar coming in or going out, but if ever there was a time for our profession to earn their stripes and back the talk of “fail, fail faster and better” “creative industry” etc etc, it is now.

For if we let people think that memorizing tricks and tactics will strenghten them for the challenges ahead instead of encouraging them to be critical, investigative and work on ideas that veer of the beaten (down) path, they will just speed up the collision they are trying to avoid.

Only to end up on some conference a year or so down the line listening to experts talk in hindsight about some competitor who came in and blew them all away.