This question hit me while I was taking a walk outside my office. Walking through all those rushing people while they are talking on the phone or some of them catching a new Pokemon. Kind of funny to see that this kind of questions are popping in my mind while I need a break from my work.
But this question is the conclusion of what I’ve been through lately.
Long story short, there was a situation when somebody just had to apologize for a little thing and there was another situation when a person just had to ask for a favor, without promising another favor back.
As I want to go deeper in this simple situation, the only thought I have is that – we are humans with emotions!
And even if we are in a digitalized world, living at the touch of a button to another.
There are a few things that differentiate a human from a computer. We can apologize for our mistake, we can have emotional moments, we can say a “thank you” for doing this, we can ask for a favor or we can say a simple “you are doing a great job” or “thank you for doing this”. And compared to our laptops, computers, phones and tablets that are doing our command just because we hit the right button. We don’t expect them to say “I’m sorry for doing the wrong command you ask me” or “Hey, could you be more careful on how you use that trackpad?”. Maybe in the best case “Are you sure you want to delete?”
It’s a simple hit command life relationship with them. If I tap on my phone on the Instagram icon, I expect the Instagram app to open and see some hearts (notifications) whilst I scroll down through my feed. Then I close it. That’s not a relationship. That’s only a computer in my hand that is doing whatever I’m saying.
But what’s the deal with my question:
What about treating marketing?
Today’s marketing has evolved with all of those social networks, SaaS companies and other softwares we are using every day. We are so familiar with the “publish” button that is talking to us orthe “take a photo” button that is saving our memory.
And we forget that we are humans who interact with other humans.
I myself found sometimes in that mood when I don’t want to interact in a day with another human being because I talked with hundreds and thousands followers on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin, GooglePlus, Emails, Pinterest, Snapchat and blog. I just tell them what I want and that’s all. But that’s not a relationship or connecting people (as some big brands once said that).
So I started treating marketing a little more different. More than that, I want to treat a marketer not only in terms of marketing or other well known numbers, I want to treat a marketer as a human being.
If I mistake something, I will apologize. If I want something, I will ask. If I want to share something, I will share it. But only if that person wants to receive.
Treating marketing is a thing and treating marketers is another thing.
Simple. I didn’t detail the question because I don’t know how many of you thought of the difference between a marketer and marketing.
Can you have marketing without marketers? Can you have marketers without marketing? Can you talk about marketing without customers and product?
We need both, marketers and marketing, but we need to differentiate them and when we work together, as marketers, we need to know that behind every marketer is a fear of something, a life goal and needs. But more than that, behind every marketer is a story that you can see only if you act like a human being.
Maybe as a society, we should start thinking more about marketers as a human beings.
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