My new column for The Drum is live now:
Over this past year, I have written The Promotion Fix column for The Drum with the mindset of the critical journalist who discusses the marketing world and speaks about the industry at events. It has led to a published piece in Digiday calling me a ‘noted contrarian’ and others accusing me of being negative and combative.
I plead guilty.
Before I worked in marketing and then became a writer and speaker on marketing, I was a journalist and newspaper editor in the US who covered politics, business, and urban development. And it is not the job of reporters to make friends.
Journalists are first and foremost supposed to provide fair and neutral coverage. Then, when warranted, they are supposed to serve as a check on those in power, to call them out when they are full of crap, and to hold their feet to the proverbial fire.
As a columnist, I have the luxury of being opinionated as well. In my columns this year, I have challenged the myths that TV and radio are dead, discussed the fraud in the online advertising world, criticized the ideas of so-called ‘content marketing’ and ‘social media marketing,’ pointed out the biggest lies in digital marketing, predicted a GDPR-inspired decline of martech and adtech, and called on the tech world to stop funding Breitbart News.
Yes, I have been negative. After all, so much in the marketing world deserves it. Too many writers and pundits are little more than cheerleaders who parrot the cliches of the moment with juvenile and incredibly uninfectious enthusiasm. Too few comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.
But now, it is time for something completely different.
Although everyone, by the very act of working in marketing, is trying to sell something, there is indeed a lot of good in the marketing industry. So, for this column near the end of 2017, I wanted to be positive and highlight what has been worthy of commendation this year.