How not to promote your marketing conference.
Just read an ad that was the very epitome of the “wrong” way to promote a conference.
Or maybe “wrong” isn’t the right word. Maybe it’s just “pointless.”
My copy of “Marketing News” came in today, and the whole front cover is taken up with an Ad for the American Marketing Association’s flagship conference, MPlanet.
I can’t find a good scan of the cover online, but the copy goes like this:
At the top of the page:
ALL ABOUT MPLANET
At AMA’s unique marketing event, professionals will find any number of new ways to survive and thrive in the new world of marketing.
Then on the bottom 2/3rds of the page, we’ve got a picture of two folks sitting on a couch staring at a starry sky. And superimposed on that we get some more, err, “creative” copy:
MPLANET
Light Years From Ordinary
Introducing MPlanet, AMA’s unprecedented event for the marketing community.
Ok, so why is this sticking in my craw? Why is this worthy of me stuck here in my super-special copywriting crimes category?
Well, let’s think about it for a second.
Go back up and read that copy again. Now answer me a few questions.
-Who is this copy aimed at? Near as I can tell, it’s marketing professionals–the very folks that would be reading a publication like marketing news. But still, the clever copywriter charged with putting this high-profile cover together says “professionals will find. . . ” instead of “you will find. . . ”
-What’s the big ballsy benefit of this conference? As a marketing pro, what amazing thing am I going to learn at this conference that’s going to flip my whole world upside down? Honestly, looking at it, I don’t know. Sure, there are platitudes and weak, weak, (weak) statements about this conference showing me (or, er, “Professionals”) “how to survive and thrive in the new world of marketing” but there’s not a single example of what that means. There’s no specificity at all.
-What sets this conference apart? What’s the USP? Reading the copy, it looks like the Unique Selling Proposition is that the conference is . . .uh. . “unique” and, uh. . “unprecedented.” Which to me is, uh, lame.
Which is really how I feel about the cover, the articles inside and the flash-heavy and content-light website the AMA shelled out big gobs of cash to put together. It’s a bearish monster, that site. Hard to navigate, harder to read and full of some of the limpest copy I’ve come across in a while.
Having been in the marketing game for a some time now, it always strikes me as odd and horrible how utterly awful the marketing done by organizations like the AMA and the DMA (direct marketing association) is. You’d think with all the high-paid power behind these organizations, they’d have the basics down, but instead we get flat and useless drivel cut together by committees who pat themselves on the back for their artful use of the word “unprecedented.”
So what should they have done?
Well, how about actually finding out what their target cares about and putting forth a specific reason to show up at Epcot center? How about talking right to the people that matter? How about throwing off the stiff as a board prose style and remembering that marketing people are, uh, people? Tough stuff, I know. But I’d bet my right arm they’d get ten times the response.
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Pay4Play November 9th
Too many of these marketing trade associations prefer in-kind contributions to build stuff, so you get pomp and circumstance rather than attendance driving marketing or content. You get what you pay for!
And you will notice that most of the speakers are either Sponsors, Exhibitors, and shills or from their “Advisory Board Member” companies (which means, they’ve all made major contributions). The few other folks there are the self-promoting dunderheads who work the conference organizers to get a slot. Then there’s the real jokes – How do you get IBM to give a keynote presentation? Give the ceo – who has done NOTHING to further the IBM Marketing footprint since Lou Gerstner left – an award. No thanks M-Planet.
chris November 9th
It just seems like a big expensive schmoz fest. Not that I’m against big expensive schmozfests as long as I’m going to meet somebody worthwhile. But the marketing jargon these people spew out literally makes me sick. Is it really that hard to just say what the heck you mean?
Most of the work I do is ground level marketing. I write a letter, a site or a brochure and know within days if it’s doing anything. I think the big wigs and ceos have lost track of the fact that a. Customers are people. b. The job of marketing is to sell stuff.
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