Human Empathy Completely Missing From Modern Marketing Says Branding/PR Expert Scott Robertson
Updated: Aug 12, 2022
Like most days, today, Scott Robertson received 18-20 telemarketing phone calls that show up as “Spam Risk” on his phone, 15 or so unwanted texts, hundreds of marketing-automation-created e-mails and a steady stream of direct messages, sponsored posts and garbage he never asked for or wanted.…And you did too.
In his new book “Just Stop It: Your Survival Guide to Marketing Myths, Mistakes and Misgivings” Scott talks about all of the bad marketing, but ultimately attempts to teach the reader how to be better—and one day maybe even good. BRAINZ Magazine sat down with the author to dig into this topic a bit more.
So, Scott — where does all of this bad marketing really come from?
Scott: I think it comes from not really thinking things through and certainly not caring about the audience in any way. I think it comes from modern marketing’s over-reliance on funnels and data. And THAT has driven the human element completely out of the room. You can see it all around you.
What do you mean?
Scott: Marketers do not care about the top of their “funnels.” And those are people in there at the top. If you’re not going to be a “conversion” or good “target” for them, they have no interest in a relationship with you. That’s like a guy going to a bar, propositioning women with one sentence like “Hey, wanna sleep with me right now?” and going around the bar that way to every single woman. Here’s the thing, even if you get one via the numbers game — what kind of a relationship do you REALLY have with them? A weird one.
What’s a big myth in marketing that you see a lot?
Scott: I think it’s that more marketing automatically equals better marketing. If one email is good, then 20 must be 20 times better, right? If one social post works a little, then 100 must work a lot. None of that is true and it’s actually quite dangerous for the brand. Only good marketing is good. Frequency doesn’t matter in the least. And good marketing is about solving problems for your audience and being as valuable as you can possibly be for THEM.
You say one of marketing’s big mistakes is with regard to data privacy. What does that mean?
Scott: Well, if you look at ALL of the governmental regulations and laws surrounding privacy, they all stem from marketing’s thirst to have information about customers that it probably shouldn’t have. Marketers want to create a personalized experience for customers because they THINK (via surveys) that customization is what customers want and that “creating a personal buying journey” will make them buy more stuff. But, personalization goes from really cool to really creepy really quickly, so you have to put on your “I’m a human” hat for a minute and say, wait, if we message this person in line at CVS about a coupon for something in their hand, to what extent will that FREAK them out? Here’s the rule I use — If it feels creepy to you, then it will feel creepy to them and you probably should find another way to reach them.
Sound like modern marketing has quite a few problems to sort out. Is there any hope for marketing?
Yes, I think so, but we in the profession must lead by example and push back on inhuman data-driven approaches that dehumanize our audiences and get us into trouble with various governments. I wrote the book because I truly believe that we can be better and that we must be better because soon consumers will be able to block almost all forms of advertising and media out there so we will need to earn our place in their lives. When our profession re-learns that, we’ll be able to create some of the best marketing the world has ever seen.
You can buy Scott’s new book on Amazon.
About the Author:
Scott Robertson is President/Founder of Robertson Communications, a PR/Marketing consultancy in Phoenix, AZ providing Premier StoryBrand™ messaging and PR/content marketing for winners. Find out more at www.robertsoncomm.com
