Jan 4, 2023 | Marketing, Strategy
Last week while reading, a turn of words came to mind, inspired by the quote most widely attributed to Hypocrites, “Let food be thy medicine, and let medicine be thy food.”
The idea ? “Let Education Be Your Entertainment And Learning Be Your Leisure.” While this perspective has become more and more true for me over the years, the past few have almost neutralized what little interest I still have in traditional ‘entertainment.’
So what does this have to do with your business and marketing strategy?
For some time a large segment of marketing has merely been thinly disguised propaganda, recently it’s grown into overt manipulative messaging. While a large segment might not yet understand this fact, many do, and more are awakening to this reality every day.
The natural consequence of dishonest communication is the eventual loss of trust. Trust is your greatest asset in business. Trust inspires confidence and once trust is betrayed it’s virtually impossible to restore.
It is far better to market your business simply and humbly with communication that is true to your abilities, than to overstate them; as they say “under-promise and over-deliver.” Of course if you have spectacular deliverables there’s no reason not to advertise them, so long you’re always able to live up to your promotion.
The urgency of our present reality demands that in both business and personal communication, we DEMONSTRATE the truth while exposing error; effective truth-telling is a critical survival skill in a lie-laden world.
Learning how to promote your business is a never-ending process. If you begin to transition some of your ‘mindless’ entertainment into “infotainment” you’ll likely find you have plenty of time for learning, and applied learning that leads to increased revenue quickly becomes entertainment in its own right!
Sep 5, 2020 | Strategy
As I take a walk around my neighborhood I still see a lot of yard signs with misinformation, you’ve probably seen them too, they read:
“THE ONLY THING MORE CONTAGIOUS THAN A VIRUS IS HOPE“.
I get the idea, and more importantly the emotion behind the message but it’s simply not true.
Hope is an extremely fragile thing and easily extinguished. People living with hope don’t shut down their family business of twenty years, they improvise—adapt— reinvent, and if necessary, find ways around “challenges.”
The same goes for hopeful clients and consumers, hope finds a way to support your favorite establishments and offer much needed encouragement.
- Hopeful people love learning;
- Hopeful people take bold risks;
- Hopeful people live to the fullest!
Is that you? I hope so. Though there is much to be alarmed about every day, there‘s always hope for those who decide defeat is not an option and challenge every instance of “bad” news.
Don’t succumb to fear; be hope to your neighbor. Fear is the thing more contagious than a virus, Unchecked fear will spread like wildfire. Fear causes people to do dumb, irrational, insane things.
Don’t accept anything as a fact until you’ve done appropriate research. The more dire or consequential the news, the more effort you want to invest in your investigation.
If the news is real then you’ll be armed with facts. Truth will always better prepare you to make wise decisions and necessary adjustments—if the news isn’t true, then you won’t waste any time preparing for a fiction.
Facts are your friend, and there’s no such thing as an incorrect fact. But there’s definitely a plethora of bad data; our job is to separate the two, to discern what is certain. Only then can we see the right path forward.
Remember, it’s not always the case but most of the time fear really is: False Evidence Appearing Real.
