8 ms·

Yes. The problem with marketing people is it's hard to tell which ones are full of shit and which ones aren't...becuase they both sound the same.

by manv1 4y ago

paulcole 4y ago
Because no full-of-shit engineer ever fools anyone…
- SilasX 4y ago
  It’s definitely a problem for engineers too, spurred on by “fake it till you make it”/“all self doubt is just Impostor Syndrome”-ism.
hammock 4y ago
That’s the other side (the consumer-facing side) of the coin, “half my marketing budget is wasted. I just don’t know which”
secondcoming 4y ago
Not just marketing people, look at the crypto space.
- vkou 4y ago
  Crypto is 90% marketing.
  - mandmandam 4y ago
    My breakdown would be ~50% marketing, 49% first mover advantage, 1% actual tech. Many coins are far superior to BTC and Ether, on basically every front.* BTC and Ether are whale oil and crude, next to green energy.* The vast majority don't have the patience to listen to what's going on under the hood. They don't have the background in math, in coding, in economics to make sound decisions amid the oceans of bullshit. And it's not reasonable to expect them to be competent in all required fields before dipping their toe in. The tech is what interests me* - I have no significant stake in any of them.* When I try to tell people [very rarely] about block lattice such as Nano, people don't believe me.* They say I sound like a marketer when I claim that it processes transactions in under a second with no fees.* If I try to talk about how important decentralization is, people claim that BTC is the most decentralized (!!). Bag holders will bullshit til the day things break completely. ... I'd love to fix all this, but when I talk about it - *. * - I sound like a marketer.
    - davidatbu 4y ago
      Does this count as poetry? Because I really like it.
      - mandmandam 4y ago
        Umm, yeah.. Sure. Yes. Definitely. ... That's really nice to hear, thank you :)
    - bsenftner 4y ago
      > They don't have the background in math, in coding, in economics And for those of us that do have backgrounds in every one of these fields, we notice the abuse of formal industry terms with crypto-exclusive definitions that weaken the economic structure or flat out fabricate fantasy. Cryptocurrencies are a great idea for a more mature civilization. We are not that civilization.
    - idiotsecant 4y ago
      There is nothing wrong with directed acyclic graph crypto schemes but shilling nano is not a good example of 'having the patience to listen to what's going on under the hood'. Nano is able to process transactions quickly and cheaply because it makes the tradeoff that it is exceptionally susceptible to no cost or low cost spam attacks / sybil attacks - I can trivially make multiple copies of my agent 'self' and flood the network with invalid or zero value transactions, ensuring that nobody else can use the network. This in fact happened in 2021, which brought the service down globally. The only reason that doesn't happen constantly is that nano is not very widely used.
      - mandmandam 4y ago
        Nano now uses a 'bucket' system which works well to mitigate spam, and they are developing it further. I don't claim that it's perfect, but it is better than most every alternative with a higher market cap - and I find that very interesting in the context of marketing. Think about how absurd it is to claim that high fees are a feature and not a bug. Really think about it. It's so obviously upside down. Now think of the eco impact from mining - also often claimed as a feature rather than a bug. Real damage is being done with this nonsense. People only take these claims seriously out of ignorance, deluged by the loud repeated claims of BTC maxis and bag holders. That was kinda the whole point of my post. Btw - shilling? Really? No lies were told, or false claims made. You are really helping prove my earlier points though.
  - cynusx 4y ago
    Marketers have been flocking to crypto companies like crazy the past years, only now you see some washed up ones coming back. One I know likened crypto to selling art... 99% bullshit and the 1% is arguable
Mordisquitos 4y ago
My pet theory is that marketing and publicity as a craft is subject to an unfortunate combination of two factors: 1) successful results are hard to measure quantitatively and 2) the skill itself is focused on selling stuff. As a result, once the market of successfully marketing products and services has reached equilibrium, marketing specialists are no longer competing and being selected for being better at selling marketable items—they are competing and being selected for being better at selling their own services to executives up to C-level. It's easier to optimise the ability to sell one particular service to a known and relatively homogeneous audience than to optimise the ability to sell any arbitrary product or service to a broad and infinitely diverse population. Hence for instance the truism of "no publicity is bad publicity". What better way for the marketing crowd to evade the negative consequences of unsuccessful, controversial or even broadly hated campaigns? Now I'm not saying that all successful marketing specialists follow this pattern. What I'm saying is that they are no longer at an advantage with regards to the bullshit sellers.
- etempleton 4y ago
  In the agency world, this is absolutely true. The goal is to get more work, not to do good work. Those who are good in the pitch meetings get promoted. In an internal marketing department? Much less true. You still need people who are good at presenting and working with internal clients, but that is more based on communication skills then selling.
  - Mordisquitos 4y ago
    Yes, that does make sense. I'm sure the motivations and incentives of internal marketing teams are much better aligned, particularly if they have been established for a while.
rapind 4y ago
> becuase they both sound the same. Found your answer.
etempleton 4y ago
It is true. As someone who has spent over a decade in marketing, only a small percentage really have any idea what they are doing. Most just parrot what people who know what they are talking about—it will sound good at first, but then you realize they don’t understand what they are saying beyond the surface-level detail. This is especially problematic when you are not a marketer and hope to hire a marketer or marketing agency. The good ones, bad ones, and nefarious ones will all sound pretty much the same. The best advice I can give if you are looking for marketing help is to find a trusted advisor. The second best is to trust the one who tells you hard truths. You will hate it when they say your product won’t sell at the volume you want in the current form, but most marketers develop a sixth sense for what will and won’t sell and often have some ways to estimate demand for a particular niche or industry. Most agencies won’t tell you that your product won’t sell because no one likes to hear that. It actually shows a lot of honesty and directness to tell a client that it won’t work.
- Clubber 4y ago
  >Most agencies won’t tell you that your product won’t sell because no one likes to hear that. Also, I think there is incentive for agencies to say a product will sell (other than people don't like hearing it). It's a lot easier to spend $100K if I'm gonna get back $500K in sales than if I'm just gonna get back $50K.
  - etempleton 4y ago
    Exactly.
- cynusx 4y ago
  I've been recruiting a marketer for some time and eventually gave up and assumed the role myself and I can concur this. The vast majority of marketers just know how to show activity but have no idea how to track, optimize and actually convert clients. Let alone find creative ways that are not just "test more ads" and "create more content". Even simply tracking ROI across the marketing/sales funnel is too much to ask
rexreed 4y ago
Assume they are full of shit unless they prove otherwise. Being actually good at marketing is pretty rare. Most marketers are those with poor skills and little talent who find marketing's ambiguity a perfect place to hide and do work in a startup without having to prove results. Even worse are so-called growth hackers.
- Pokepokalypse 4y ago
  Ultimately, marketers market themselves. They may be good at it or bad at it, but at the end of the day, if they're dishonest about it, they can be successful also.
awat 4y ago
Agreed, and many of them don’t know when they are lying. It’s easier to sound really confident when you don’t have the domain knowledge to know if you are telling the truth.

Yes. The problem with marketing people is it's hard to tell which ones are full of shit and which ones aren't...becuase they both sound the same.

by manv1 4y ago

Yes. The problem with marketing people is it's hard to tell which ones are full of shit and which ones aren't...becuase they both sound the same.

paulcole 4y ago

Because no full-of-shit engineer ever fools anyone…

SilasX 4y ago
It’s definitely a problem for engineers too, spurred on by “fake it till you make it”/“all self doubt is just Impostor Syndrome”-ism.

hammock 4y ago

That’s the other side (the consumer-facing side) of the coin, “half my marketing budget is wasted. I just don’t know which”

secondcoming 4y ago

Not just marketing people, look at the crypto space.

vkou 4y ago
Crypto is 90% marketing.
- mandmandam 4y ago
  My breakdown would be ~50% marketing, 49% first mover advantage, 1% actual tech. Many coins are far superior to BTC and Ether, on basically every front.* BTC and Ether are whale oil and crude, next to green energy.* The vast majority don't have the patience to listen to what's going on under the hood. They don't have the background in math, in coding, in economics to make sound decisions amid the oceans of bullshit. And it's not reasonable to expect them to be competent in all required fields before dipping their toe in. The tech is what interests me* - I have no significant stake in any of them.* When I try to tell people [very rarely] about block lattice such as Nano, people don't believe me.* They say I sound like a marketer when I claim that it processes transactions in under a second with no fees.* If I try to talk about how important decentralization is, people claim that BTC is the most decentralized (!!). Bag holders will bullshit til the day things break completely. ... I'd love to fix all this, but when I talk about it - *. * - I sound like a marketer.
  - davidatbu 4y ago
    Does this count as poetry? Because I really like it.
    - mandmandam 4y ago
      Umm, yeah.. Sure. Yes. Definitely. ... That's really nice to hear, thank you :)
  - bsenftner 4y ago
    > They don't have the background in math, in coding, in economics And for those of us that do have backgrounds in every one of these fields, we notice the abuse of formal industry terms with crypto-exclusive definitions that weaken the economic structure or flat out fabricate fantasy. Cryptocurrencies are a great idea for a more mature civilization. We are not that civilization.
  - idiotsecant 4y ago
    There is nothing wrong with directed acyclic graph crypto schemes but shilling nano is not a good example of 'having the patience to listen to what's going on under the hood'. Nano is able to process transactions quickly and cheaply because it makes the tradeoff that it is exceptionally susceptible to no cost or low cost spam attacks / sybil attacks - I can trivially make multiple copies of my agent 'self' and flood the network with invalid or zero value transactions, ensuring that nobody else can use the network. This in fact happened in 2021, which brought the service down globally. The only reason that doesn't happen constantly is that nano is not very widely used.
    - mandmandam 4y ago
      Nano now uses a 'bucket' system which works well to mitigate spam, and they are developing it further. I don't claim that it's perfect, but it is better than most every alternative with a higher market cap - and I find that very interesting in the context of marketing. Think about how absurd it is to claim that high fees are a feature and not a bug. Really think about it. It's so obviously upside down. Now think of the eco impact from mining - also often claimed as a feature rather than a bug. Real damage is being done with this nonsense. People only take these claims seriously out of ignorance, deluged by the loud repeated claims of BTC maxis and bag holders. That was kinda the whole point of my post. Btw - shilling? Really? No lies were told, or false claims made. You are really helping prove my earlier points though.
- cynusx 4y ago
  Marketers have been flocking to crypto companies like crazy the past years, only now you see some washed up ones coming back. One I know likened crypto to selling art... 99% bullshit and the 1% is arguable

Mordisquitos 4y ago

My pet theory is that marketing and publicity as a craft is subject to an unfortunate combination of two factors: 1) successful results are hard to measure quantitatively and 2) the skill itself is focused on selling stuff. As a result, once the market of successfully marketing products and services has reached equilibrium, marketing specialists are no longer competing and being selected for being better at selling marketable items—they are competing and being selected for being better at selling their own services to executives up to C-level. It's easier to optimise the ability to sell one particular service to a known and relatively homogeneous audience than to optimise the ability to sell any arbitrary product or service to a broad and infinitely diverse population. Hence for instance the truism of "no publicity is bad publicity". What better way for the marketing crowd to evade the negative consequences of unsuccessful, controversial or even broadly hated campaigns? Now I'm not saying that all successful marketing specialists follow this pattern. What I'm saying is that they are no longer at an advantage with regards to the bullshit sellers.

etempleton 4y ago
In the agency world, this is absolutely true. The goal is to get more work, not to do good work. Those who are good in the pitch meetings get promoted. In an internal marketing department? Much less true. You still need people who are good at presenting and working with internal clients, but that is more based on communication skills then selling.
- Mordisquitos 4y ago
  Yes, that does make sense. I'm sure the motivations and incentives of internal marketing teams are much better aligned, particularly if they have been established for a while.

rapind 4y ago

> becuase they both sound the same. Found your answer.

etempleton 4y ago

It is true. As someone who has spent over a decade in marketing, only a small percentage really have any idea what they are doing. Most just parrot what people who know what they are talking about—it will sound good at first, but then you realize they don’t understand what they are saying beyond the surface-level detail. This is especially problematic when you are not a marketer and hope to hire a marketer or marketing agency. The good ones, bad ones, and nefarious ones will all sound pretty much the same. The best advice I can give if you are looking for marketing help is to find a trusted advisor. The second best is to trust the one who tells you hard truths. You will hate it when they say your product won’t sell at the volume you want in the current form, but most marketers develop a sixth sense for what will and won’t sell and often have some ways to estimate demand for a particular niche or industry. Most agencies won’t tell you that your product won’t sell because no one likes to hear that. It actually shows a lot of honesty and directness to tell a client that it won’t work.

Clubber 4y ago
>Most agencies won’t tell you that your product won’t sell because no one likes to hear that. Also, I think there is incentive for agencies to say a product will sell (other than people don't like hearing it). It's a lot easier to spend $100K if I'm gonna get back $500K in sales than if I'm just gonna get back $50K.
- etempleton 4y ago
  Exactly.
cynusx 4y ago
I've been recruiting a marketer for some time and eventually gave up and assumed the role myself and I can concur this. The vast majority of marketers just know how to show activity but have no idea how to track, optimize and actually convert clients. Let alone find creative ways that are not just "test more ads" and "create more content". Even simply tracking ROI across the marketing/sales funnel is too much to ask

rexreed 4y ago

Assume they are full of shit unless they prove otherwise. Being actually good at marketing is pretty rare. Most marketers are those with poor skills and little talent who find marketing's ambiguity a perfect place to hide and do work in a startup without having to prove results. Even worse are so-called growth hackers.

Pokepokalypse 4y ago
Ultimately, marketers market themselves. They may be good at it or bad at it, but at the end of the day, if they're dishonest about it, they can be successful also.

awat 4y ago

Agreed, and many of them don’t know when they are lying. It’s easier to sound really confident when you don’t have the domain knowledge to know if you are telling the truth.