Let’s face it: the Internet is crawling with marketers. Some of them are legitimate professionals, whose years of experience and insight can help your business find new customers.
And some of them are just douchebags.
Lately, I’ve come across so many people whose “marketing efforts” (if they can truly be categorized as such) are so confoundingly desperate and /or blatantly unethical, it’s become aggravating / nauseating / downright infuriating. I stare, mystified, at their fraudulent websites, stolen content and automated multi-level marketing schemes and I wonder, “Am I the only person who thinks this is all bullshit?”
Of course not. It doesn’t take a genius to spot a charlatan. It’s just that you just haven’t had the pleasure of stumbling across these same snake oil salesmen yourself. But finding them just got easier, because now they’re on display at Marketing Douchebags.
What Makes a Marketing Douchebag?
The marketing world is rife with fraud by degree. Lures, misdirection and overemphasis have long been employed to direct potential consumers toward the upside of a deal while minimizing exposure to the negative. But that’s not the kind of age-old chicanery we’re talking about here.
To qualify as a Marketing Douchebag, the offender must:
- Behave in a HIGHLY unethical manner
- Offer services of little to no actual value
- Pollute social media channels with useless crap
- Claim experience that doesn’t match the facts
- Give us reason to doubt s/he actually exists, or
- Lie blatantly
Not that ethically bankrupt marketing is anything new. Snake oil has long been sold in all shapes and sizes. But when that snake oil comes with a URL, it’s much easier to dissect.
Why Bother?
As I mentioned at the end of my Socialnomics review, I believe in the positive potential of social media to improve the way we live, work and communicate. But those of us who work legitimately in this field have to hold ourselves accountable, in terms of both quality and ethics. If we allow the unscrupulous fast-buck artists to hijack the conversation, we’ve squandered our opportunity for change. Don’t let the bastards win.
Tags: branding, bullshit, Business, common sense, ethics, expert, honesty, legal, marketing douchebags, perception, Social Media
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Bob Foley
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Doug Haslam
