CardMarketing 2.0

"Now I bid you lose me and find yourselves, and only when you have all denied me will I return to you." Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo

I've read a fair few advertising and marketing books in my time – from Seth Godin through to Sergio Zyman – but do you know what? It was about the worst thing I've ever done. Thankfully, I have a poor memory and most of it, almost immediately, I forget.

So, why's learning about marketing the worst thing a marketer could do? Simple. Marketing is a track, and as long as you stick on a track, you're following in the footsteps of others, which rules out any chance of being original — of being different.

Not only is marketing a track to nowhere, it's a fast one. It's fast for three reasons (there are probably many more but this is a blog not a doctoral submission, and anyway my coffee buzz is starting to subside):

• It's impossible to differentiate your product on a track — it's a track, how could you?
  
• Consumers are saturated with messages, so you have to differentiate, leave the track
  
• Consumers are fed up with tracks, indifferent to 'the same' — they demand difference

The key is to stray off the beaten track, to sail into uncharted territory, to boldly go, Jim, where no marketer has gone before. The only way to do this is to forget marketing altogether. But how?

Let's quickly return to the above words by Nietzsche, the greatest (and most greatly misunderstood) of the German philosophers. These words were a plea by Nietzsche for people to forget his works, to forget his philosophies, to forget, lose and deny him, because only in doing so would they be able to create their own philosophies, find their own way, to become as he would like them: creators, shapers of their own destiny. Dynamite.

Following this logic, the only way to market genuinely, creatively, effectively, is to lose marketing, deny it, turn your back on it altogether. Only by losing it, denying it, straying far off the track will you rediscover it, market in a way that is effective, different, dynamic and, as a result, profitable.

What I mean by all this, what I'm trying to say, is that when you're trying to market, don't think as a marketer, look elsewhere. Look into the most unusual, (seemingly) irrelevant places for ideas, elegant ideas and concepts that can be lifted and dropped into the cards space.

Web 2.0 isn't just about technology, it's about ideas — and thinking, doing things differently to your peers. The only way to do market effectively these days is to deny what you've learnt to date.