Authentic marketing, what a concept.
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To some, it doesn’t even seem possible.
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​They hear the world marketing and automatically think of sleazy salesman and sleazy sales tactics.​
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And honestly, that’s how I thought of it too. Especially when it comes to advertising.
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What is an advertisement but something trying to sell you on something?
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What is marketing but trying to trick us into thinking a product is better than it is?
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The unfortunate part is that I work in marketing. That I ran a business as a marketing consultant, that I worked for agencies.
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So everyday, I had to go off to work, shut off the morality part of my brain for 8-12 hours, then go home.
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I’d try to find ways to be a better marketer, to learn the concepts. But this was really from a perspective of wanting to get a raise than a true interest in the field.
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Marketing, for me, was always a last ditch field I fell into after all my dreams were crushed.
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It was a representation of all my failures, not only had I not succeeded, but I had to work in a field, that I didn’t only not like, but outright hated the whole concept.
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I tried to convince myself that it was about business growth, but that was not the reality of my day-to-day existence
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So instead I continued on. Until I came up with, what for me, seemed like a radical concept.
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​What if we didn’t lie? What if we didn’t manipulate? But what if we used the positive aspects of the product to position it in a way to find those that need it ? Or at least want it and are willing to pay for it?​
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Inherently, the difficulty lies in finding a good product to market.
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This is when I came across Conscious Capitalism, a great book which changed my perception on how we can view the systems that run this country.
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But in this book they dismiss marketing, viewing it as almost something that a company not following these principles need to follow.
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I believe it was a short paragraph somewhere in the book.
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It was not until I came across Seth Godin that I heard someone talk about marketing in the way I was starting to envision it in my head.
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I had heard of him before and even read one of his books, but until now I must admit I dismissed him as the goofy guy with the glasses.
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But in reading “This is Marketing” I had all my thoughts and questions on authentic marketing answered.
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In one sense I was ecstatic, here is a leader in the field talking about exactly what I had been formulating in my head.
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In the other sense, I was a bit disappointed, as I felt that I had been the only one thinking of these concepts.
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Now that Seth had been spreading the word, my ideas won’t be as revolutionary.
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Anyway, that rant my not have answered what Authentic Marketing is, but it did show how I came across the concept.

So here’s what it is:
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​Authentic Marketing: A new way of speaking about your company, a way to talk about your products and attract customers that doesn’t manipulate, but adds to their experience.
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At least that’s one working definition for now.
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I’m working to develop this concept more thoroughly in the next posts.