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> Those concerns range from worries that ads will appear on controversial “subreddits,” or topic-based message forums, to fears of campaigns being flayed alive

> Those concerns range from worries that ads will appear on controversial “subreddits,” or topic-based message forums, to fears of campaigns being flayed alive by Redditors on anti-advertising subreddits like HailCorporate. Let's be honest, the problem is that the vast majority of marketers are really dumb and terrible at their jobs — they only want to do things that have already been "proven to work", even though by far the highest ROI goes to those who go first. That's not to say there isn't a lot of fucked up stuff happening on Reddit, but that isn't the real issue here.

gk1 9y ago
How many marketers do you know? I'm glad to see you edited "99% of marketers" to "vast majority of marketers," but that still reeks of a generalization based on personal opinion and not fact.
- Alex3917 9y ago
  > How many marketers do you know? I've talked with hundreds or thousands. But the underlying idea comes from Seth Godin, who I'm sure has talked with at least an order of magnitude more. He has lots of posts on this theme, e.g.: http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2012/07/the-importance-of-going-first.html http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2012/07/the-importan... It's trivially easy to test the idea, just going on Bumble Networking (most people are marketers) and offer some new product or service that is obviously a no brainer. It doesn't matter if the thing you're selling doesn't actually exist, as long as it would be clearly beneficial. And just keep track of how much interest you actually get, versus people who just want to "make an instagram" or whatever.
  - gk1 9y ago
    I don't see what first-mover advantage has to do with Reddit as a marketing channel. Plenty of companies are already advertising there, and there are plenty of reasons why others aren't doing the same besides being "really dumb and terrible at their jobs.

gk1 9y ago

How many marketers do you know? I'm glad to see you edited "99% of marketers" to "vast majority of marketers," but that still reeks of a generalization based on personal opinion and not fact.

Alex3917 9y ago
> How many marketers do you know? I've talked with hundreds or thousands. But the underlying idea comes from Seth Godin, who I'm sure has talked with at least an order of magnitude more. He has lots of posts on this theme, e.g.: http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2012/07/the-importance-of-going-first.html http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2012/07/the-importan... It's trivially easy to test the idea, just going on Bumble Networking (most people are marketers) and offer some new product or service that is obviously a no brainer. It doesn't matter if the thing you're selling doesn't actually exist, as long as it would be clearly beneficial. And just keep track of how much interest you actually get, versus people who just want to "make an instagram" or whatever.
- gk1 9y ago
  I don't see what first-mover advantage has to do with Reddit as a marketing channel. Plenty of companies are already advertising there, and there are plenty of reasons why others aren't doing the same besides being "really dumb and terrible at their jobs.