How the fake marketers used virtue signals to establish credibility
Malcolm Auld takes a walk through the murky world of virtue signals, where everything's an 'economy' designed to sell ebooks and trick LinkedIn's algorithms.
If you work in marketing you know that thanks to the internet and digital technology, the whole world has changed spectacularly. Human DNA has completely morphed. As consumers, we humans have suddenly stopped our centuries-old behaviour and now act entirely differently in every way, particularly when it comes to buying stuff.
Not only that, but everything that ever worked in marketing prior to last week, no longer works today. “Marketing has changed forever” is the gospel according to the fake marketers.
It’s the end of marketing as we know it…
And these fake marketers have successfully used virtue signals to con the marketing industry into believing this gospel. Every week they claim there are new rules for everything marketing. Apparently, these new rules are so “disruptive”, that only those in the secret priesthood of fake marketers, possess the unique knowledge to understand them. Like the weavers of the Emperor’s new clothes, they claim you’re unfit as a marketer if you can’t see what they can.
The virtue signallers play on FOMO and hide behind a bizarre myth that because this new marketing is done via computers, then “traditional marketers” have no idea how it works. Only the fake marketers masquerading as digital marketers can deliver the future of marketing. So roll up, roll up and get your digital snake oil, before you go out of business.
In case you’re curious, Virtue Signalling is the conspicuous expression of moral values done primarily with the intent of enhancing standing within a social group.
In the marketing world, virtue signalling is the conspicuous expression of marketing myths and B.S. done primarily with the intent of faking marketing expertise to enhance standing within the marketing industry.
The virtue signals come in numerous forms, but mainly they are fake claims, silly buzzwords, fake economies and fabricated expertise. You hear the signals in meetings and read them in blogs, articles and social channels. One common element among the virtue signallers is their complete lack of real marketing expertise. They just shovel virtue signals in the hope of manufacturing some credibility and fertilising their reputations.
These are typical of the fake claims:
- There are new rules for marketing and PR
- Customers want conversations with brands
- Customers don’t want to be sold to
- Selling is dead
- Traditional media no longer work
- Personas have replaced target audience
- Brand advertising is dead and so are advertising agencies
- Marketing automation is the future of all customer communications
- QR codes, VR, AI, Pokemon Go, <insert latest fad> will change everything – forever
- Content is king (and queen)
- Every sale in the world begins with a search
- 157% of all sales are online
The jargon monkeys love their buzzwords and acronyms. You’ll know many of them like these:
- Customer engagement/experience/journey
- Brand conversations
- Disruptive technology
- Reach out
- Ideation
- Transparency
- Personas
- Data-driven marketing
- Contextual marketing
- Omni-channel marketing
- <insert label> marketing
- Growth hacking
- Owned, earned and paid media
- OMG the list goes on, and on, and on…
Even more shady are the whole new economies that are allegedly revolutionising marketing:
- the social economy
- the engagement economy
- the attention economy
- the belief economy
- the sharing economy
- the purpose economy
- the content economy
- the influencer economy
- the subscription economy
The only economies these support, are the financial economies of each author who manufactured the economic term and published a book to fake legitimacy. By playing on FOMO they charge a fortune for alleged insights into their secret economic sauce, while doing the rounds of the marketing industry and seminar circuit sprouting their virtue signals.
Finally, there is the thought leader industry – because that’s what it is, an industry. There’s almost no legitimate thought leadership. Hire a virtual assistant/slave in a third-world country to ghost write a book, pay an SEO expert to own a few related keywords, and publish an article to stake your claim to expertise.
Some even label themselves some kind of influencer such as Linkfluencer, Socialfluencer and the like. I attended a fluencer’s webinar and couldn’t believe the dross being peddled. Apparently these are the three keys to success on LinkedIn:
- Connect with lots of people
- Connect with journalists
- Publish stuff and send it to your contacts
The “fluencer” running the event thought it was an amazing achievement to be published in online business press – the machine that demands content to keep itself fresh. Any marketer worth their salt is regularly published in business press, thanks to their PR company, or the sheer fact they are a legitimate expert.
Being in the media is standard operating procedure for marketers. So to get excited because your article gets a run is at best sad and really quite naive.
Another fluencer shared their secret to becoming an influencer on LinkedIn. Before you post an article, invite all your contacts to like and share your article immediately it is posted. This will fool the algorithm into thinking your article is popular and help improve your influencer standing within LinkedIn. Sad but true. To be seen as an influencer you have to get colleagues to help you scam the system.
Why not just be bloody good at your job and share legitimate expertise, base on years of real experience? Or possibly just tell the truth?
Here’s a signal to consider – spend your marketing budget as if it was your own money, promoting your business, so the profits feed your family. You’ll be amazed at how you start to ignore the virtue signals and focus your thinking on what really works in marketing.
Gotta go now. Am working on an AI blockchain cryptocurrency VR app. It’s going to revolutionise marketing forever…
This post was originally published on Malcom Auld’s blog. You can read the original here.
Old man yells at cloud
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Malcolm, while I like your old white male rants as much as the next old white male, you basically shot yourself in the foot here. The basic content of your article is awesome. Bullshit, as far as the eye can see. True.
But ‘virtue signalling’? None of what you talk about is virtue signalling. Mate, you posted the definition in the article! There’s no ‘moral’ element to this at all. Yes, there are ‘signalling’ activities going on but it’s nothing to do with ‘virtue’.
It’s *almost* like you’ve been reading too many Alt-right newsletters in purple comic sans font and just got carried away with, you know, using a BUZZWORD. And a particularly crap one at that, as virtue signalling is an entirely natural part of human social behaviour, not the crime of the century that more fascist-leaning folks want to make it (and ironically they are the biggest proponents of it).
I’m guessing you couldn’t find a snappy term to use so you co-opted that one but it really lets the air out of the tyres and edges you towards the hypocrisy lifeboat by using a pointless term to try and signal superiority.
But as I said, love a good rant, so 7/10 for this one keep it up 😉
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And more so. Virtue signalling is an incredibly dangerous term; it’s the new political correctness, designed to make people think it’s once again ok to be racist, sexist, homophobic or any of the other ‘ists’ that so many over privileged idiots seem nostalgic for.
Trying to flog your content blog by equating shit marketing techniques to this term is a pretty low form of self promotion, though I hold Mumbrella more to account for republishing this crap in their eternal chase for another click.
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A good point to raise that the term “virtue signalling” has some dangerous connotations and sadly (because it is such a useful term) is being used by a lot of alt-right people.
The sad thing is if the term wasn’t being used in such a way, it would be an awfully useful piece of language to deploy without the associates risks because virtue-signalling is quite conspicuous in the age of social media.
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