Marketing in a world where we’re all sick of being sold.
If I were to talk about what I set out to do — about what Creative Voices is at its most fundamental level — this is what I would say. I built this for the people who hate marketing. Which is to say, for the people who care about their work but think they hate the self-promotion side of it.
Because marketing, as they’ve seen it, is sleazy and slimy and completely one-sided.
It’s about coercing sales. It’s about using data and people’s brain chemistry against themselves for the sake of profit. And then having the gall to call it data.
The people for whom the words marketing and sales strike an immediate feeling of unease. And the people for whom the very idea of self-promotion makes them break out in a cold sweat.
And if you notice, all these things that make people uneasy have to do with how they’re getting the word out. It’s completely separate from the work itself. In fact, the people that find refuge at Creative Voices are those that care deeply about their work but rebel against the more mainstream business advice.
My worry is that the people we need — those that are kind, thoughtful, and driven by more than money and image — are staying away from the messy work of running their own show because they despise the idea of sales and self-promotion. Of asking for support, donations, and purchases.
But what if self-promotion didn’t have to be gross?
Personally, I want to know about people doing cool things.
Things I care about. People trying to save species and help us cook cleaner, kinder food. People trying to help us navigate the doom and gloom without losing sight of what’s good and worthwhile.
These people use marketing to help us find each other. Meaning that marketing is not intrinsically deplorable, but its nature is shaped by the hands that wield it. How freeing. It means that marketing can be in terms of shared values, not just slimy tactics and predictably shallow outcomes.
So to the people who care about their work, to those who want to help us all navigate to a better future, this approach is a love letter to you.
It’s about sharing your work and finding the people who want to share in the journey with you.
I wanted to find a way to help you do this without hating how you did it.
Marketing may have a bad reputation. But really it’s marketing taking the blame for the rotten people employing unsavory methods in pursuit of profit. But marketing is just a tool. It unveils the motives of those using it. So if your motives are what I think they are, you have nothing to worry about.
Get out there, share your work, find your people and just keep trying. The world won’t get better if you don’t.