An Uneducated Discussion
One of the cardinal sins in academic conversation is to utter the words “from my experience”. Inherently, they are unscientific. Similarly, the plural of anecdote is not data.
With that said, from my experience, most people who have seen 1997’s Good Will Hunting seem to remember one scene in particular. Standing up to an intellectual bully in a bar, Will, the troubled prodigy played by a young Matt Damon, deftly proves the folly not merely of unoriginal thought, but in his eyes a glaring weakness in the tuition based education system.
“See the sad thing about a guy like you is in about 50 years you’re gonna start doing some thinking on your own and you’re gonna come up with the fact that there are two certainties in life. One, don’t do that. And two, you dropped a hundred and fifty grand on a fuckin’ education you coulda got for a dollar fifty in late charges at the Public Library.”
It is, undoubtedly, a great line. However, though a provocative thought, there are obvious flaws with his argument, such as the (lost) virtue signaling of having a degree. But more importantly, it ignores the fact that education comes with a syllabus.
In a marketing world where fewer and fewer professionals have qualified training (relatively speaking), this is often ignored. While one, of course, can access all the books of a formal education and then some, either at the public library or online, it’s impossible to know what books to read if nobody has gone to the length of telling you.
As a result, many modern marketers read online magazine articles and books by people who, although supposedly influential, may or may not have a grasp of the wider aspects of marketing. This inevitably leads to beliefs that, for example, the best way to grow a brand is through social media (it’s not — most people who visit social media channels are already brand loyal), brand purpose is a prerequisite for profit (it’s not — the notion stems from a halo effect) and tactics come before strategy (they don’t — it will put the cart before the horse, yet still somehow get you stuck in horseshit).
Some argue that practical experience will eradicate these misconceptions, but going by the current discourse, that’s clearly not the case. Marketers, particularly without training, often begin their careers on the tactical side. This means that even as they gain experience, their perspective will be bottom-top. Strategy, on the other hand, is top-bottom. In other words, it really isn’t that difficult to see why strategy remains largely ignored or, at the very least, misunderstood — it’s a result of a lack of training and/or relevant experience. Reading books on strategy will help, but there are about 55,000 (literally) to choose from. How will you know where to start?
But, I hear some of you object, books are outdated. Marketing is moving at a pace at which literature cannot keep up.
Alas, not so. Technology and, by extension, certain marketing communications options are evolving seemingly daily. But the fundamentals remain. And guess what? They are found in books.
No, you don’t need training to be a successful marketer. Clearly, you don’t. But your chances of success are much better. And while you can get the equivalent education for a dollar fifty in late charges at the Public Library, you have to actually go down there. Not knowing what books to read, you’re going to have to be there quite a while, and to make matters worse, you might unknowingly find yourself in the fiction section.
Of course, I’d argue all marketers should do that, regardless of whether they had training or not. A never-ending, varied list of books to read will do wonders either way.
From my experience.
