In Defense Of Skewering Mediocre Marketing
I apologize to Matthew Rose for his short-lived tenure on the leaderboard, but there’s a new favorite person in town: Dustin Curtis — who was born in 1987!! — who writes:
The solution to the enterprise quality problem is easy: foster a culture that doesn’t allow the company to make, produce, sell, or accept shit. Done. Well, it’s not quite that easy. But Steve Jobs is notorious for saying “this is shit” to shitty things, and that bluntness, I think, is essential to a culture that creates amazing products and experiences.
Um, hello, Preacher, says this member of your choir. From my earlier post “For Condescension“:
But if we’re going to
- Elevate the level of discourse about marketing
- Discourage a culture of conformity within the world of generally-unrepentant capitalists
- Minimize the incentive to simply nod our heads and do what our boss or policy dictates simply because it pays the mortgage
then suit-wearing punks like myself practically have a moral obligation to audibly slap their foreheads when a marketer engages in the mediocre.
I mean, if I sat here and simply accepted a continuous stream of poorly designed emails and abhorrently executed social media campaigns, wouldn’t my silence practically make me an accomplice? (Cue Zizek.)
Benevolent evil-doing on marketing’s landscape is evil-doing just the same. It’s an assault on excellence. I can’t take it. I won’t stomach it. It gives me hives.
I’m glad these kids today have at least one member of their ranks that’s happy to raise a fist to the limp.
For God! For Country! For Yale!
Oh wait, wrong context. I mean, um, go team! Go Dustin 1987!
