I both love and hate marketing. Well. When it comes to myself and my own work - I hate marketing. I hate trying to craft a narrative of who I am. Who am I? I’m a million pieces spread everywhere. (“Too many fragments of the spirit have I scattered in these streets” - Kahlil Gibran).
But when it comes to fantastic marketing done by others - I can’t get enough. Perhaps because the best marketing is story-telling. It is aspirational. It is wordsmith perfection. It is the pinnacle of evocation and simplicity in word art.
There are two things that come to mind when I think about fantastic marketing.
First is the Lexus tagline that they ran ads for. I am not sure if it’s still the Lexus tagline, but damn was it good. The Relentless Pursuit of Perfection. I still love it, even if I am now wholly in the imperfection rocks camp. The second, was the comedy What Women Want. The one where Mel Gibson could hear all the thoughts women around him. That movie came out in the year 2000. 23 years ago. (WOW - you know you’re old when…) In it, he comes up with a genius marketing campaign for running shoes. It was also perfect…(since he knew what women wanted, duh).
The key to good marketing though, is knowing your audience. It’s hard to market to everyone. Unless it’s air or water, things generally aren’t for everyone. This is true of pretty much all marketing, including marketing myself and marketing my work. I am not everyone’s cup of tea, and my writing/ law-art certainly is not.
Yesterday I took myself out on an artist’s date and saw Jessica Chastain as Nora in A Doll’s House. I contemplated taking a friend but then decided to say fuck it. I didn’t want to have to explain the significance of this play to a lay-person. The stage was bare minimum because A Doll’s House is a pure drama - writing, plot and acting focused. I love Broadway, but I especially love the naked kind without the set piece bells and whistles. It is one of the greatest joys of living in NYC (because lord knows most of living here is unpleasant).
What am I trying to say here? I’m trying to say that maybe the key for me is to continue to lower the marketing bar for myself (haha!). A Doll’s House is not for everyone. Me, and by extension my work, is also not for everyone.
Maybe, instead of trying to present some perfect version of me, I just go out there as myself - an imperfect person. Is it professional to have my cartoon avatar on my LinkedIn profile? Definitely not. Should I care more? Maybe. Do I care more? I aspire not to. The cartoon version of myself is who I am and who I aspire to be. Light, joyous, and funny. It is the most authentic “photo” of myself that I have. It’s not going to be most people’s cups of tea. In fact, it’s going to turn off MOST people. But it’s my best piece of marketing.
I know who I am and IDGAF if you don’t think it’s professional. I am tired of conforming myself anyway. I am trying to find my own Mel Gibson mind-readers who are picking up what I am putting down. I know (and have even encountered) some folks out there who I don’t need to explain my play to. The folks out there who will eventually find my work and like it. Sorry Lexus! but thanks for the inspiration: I am relentlessly pursuing imperfection.
And that is good enough.