Me: Marketing in the 21st Century

by talkbackty on Sep 24, 2011

"Hiding aspects of your personal life in order to get hired or attract more business is a shameful practice." -Steve Pavlina


Once again my posts begin with inspiration from another source. I started following Steve Pavlina on Google+ after he was recommended by Leo Babuta, also on Google+.

If you're not keeping track, that's three people that you went through to get the above quote. You went through me, I went through Leo, which lead me to Steve. The internet is wonderful. We are slowly moving towards becoming one...but today is not the day for my crazy awesome theories.

Today is a day for simplicity. That's what I find Steve Pavlina brings through his posts and comments on Google+. That quote above lead to numerous comments from Steve's followers, most driven by anger.

"Equally shameful are businesses that make hiring decisions based on said aspects of one's personal life."

"Will YOU hire me? Will someone you know hire me? Should I lessen my chances at any job by being completely honest about things that are completely irrelevant to the performance of that job? ESPECIALLY knowing that at least half of the 100+ other people trying to fill that position are going to lie through their teeth and get away with it to get that job?"

"Keeping some parts of my life or personality private doesn't make me feel like I'm compromising anything."

I latched on to some of the concepts Steve was talking about. Most importantly, the profile picture* on my various social networks.


Steve's point (and the one I agree with) is that people are not interested in your brand or your marketing campaign, in fact they probably never were...it was just all we've had for so long. What they are interested in is you, and they want to see you when they interact through social media.

My philosophy was to brand as many things as I could: The podcast needed artwork. We got that...now spread the artwork as fast and as broadly as possible. Every thing you do should be connected to that artwork. Twitter, artwork. Google+, artwork. iTunes, artwork. Anywhere they go the costumer should be able to see and recognize the artwork.

Sound familiar? It should. It's the marketing strategy of every major company including Wal-Mart, McDonalds and Nike.

My new philosophy? I'm not Wal-Mart and you're not a faceless consumer. In the age of the internet you should be interested not in the brand, but the source. I'm the source, and I need to stop hiding behind the brand.

The 21st century has already fostered more growth in a decade than the 20th century fostered in a hundred years. On September 11th, 2001 every single news internet site crashed from overwhelming page views. Today, Facebook serves 750 million people across the world. There are over 170 million tweets sent per day. Every smartphone available now is hundreds of times more powerful than a 90's computer.

In this supercharged world it's easy to tune things out. Branding only makes tuning something out easier. But when you know that there's a person behind the brand; a person who works hard, thinks creatively and interacts with you individually...that is hard to ignore.

I'm changing all the Twitter profiles to include a picture of me. Not a cartoon. Not a brand. Just me. Simple.




That's how I plan on marketing in the 21st century.