Very often, when people think "marketing" they think pushy salespeople, slick but shallow web content, and spam. I love this conversation between Seth Godin and Chase Jarvis about how good marketing isn't about any of those things, and how creators can market themselves better and more effectively sans all the sales-y BS:
I met with a client today in Vancouver. A forest products company that is taking fall down, bettle kill and trees damaged by fire and producing quality materials from them.
They’re contributing to health of the forest by using this fiber stock opposed to mature trees.
A big part of their marketing story to the consumer is about stewardship, sustainability and ethical business practices.
Marketing can be and should be ethical when the story is there to tell.
A big company has -do no evil- as part of their ethos-
Back that up/demonstate it and you have a values based story to tell.
I had lunch a few months ago with Chase when he visited SmugMug. I have always admired his photography and what he's doing with Creative Live.
I'm pretty sure the reason his marketing is not evil is because he isn't evil. He's the genuine article, who can present, take photos, and even get engineers to build great camera apps. The world needs more people like him.
Wow, can we get him to do a panel on CreativeLive??:)
I told him all about panels and he seemed very interested but he wants them embedded on Creative Live, not off his site like on Cake. That would be a very hard thing to build with all the security concerns.
