Having 3 kids under 5 makes it a bit tough sometimes to do yard work during “waking” hours.  Therefore,  pulling weeds & pruning thorny-vine-type bushes, that could poke the eye out of anyone walking up to our house, has to wait until after 8:30 pm.  

So, there I am digging through this pesky little eye poker when I have a marketing revelation! (last time a revelation popped into my head I was cleaning toilets and the time before that the tub).  A little background on this damn vine/bush.  It has these beautiful little red, winter berries for the birds and are attached to the thorniest vines that a few have seemed to die off for some reason.  The new growth is malleable, soft, green & contains no thorns.

So, how does this relate to marketing….ahhh, welcome to the world of analogies!

The malleable, green, new growth represents the companies and individuals that have realized that Social Media is now crucial to their lively hood as a business owners and are taking action (and of course there is a “right way” to engage as a business…maybe I will write that after a good scrubbin’ of the ‘fridge this weekend).

The thorny, dead, refuse-to-be-cut, poke-your-eye-out vines are just that.  The thorny, “you will not take me alive”, old marketing curmudgeons that think that this “social media thing” is a fad because they don’t understand/know how to sell it to their customers.  They still think in “brand awareness campaigns” & sell tactics on how many eyeballs see a product.  Rather than how to engage potential customers, gather data & insight from current evangelists and build relationships for a stronger brand.

That’s ok…the bush got trimmed & all the dead branches are now gone.  Yes, I got poked & blood was drawn…but in the end, I won.