The Internet. Now with Tartar Control.

The Internet, Now With Tartar Control I think every time I buy toothpaste I buy a different type. I can’t remember from tube to tube which brand I owned before, so every time I go to the market I have to look at 120 boxes all over again.

Every single time.

In fact, the only specific tooth product I can think of at all at the moment is one old people use to soak their dentures in at night. I only remember that because the commercial for it is absolutely abhorrent. Watching someone take out their teeth and stick them in a cup of fizzy liquid as the camera zooms in isn’t my idea of a good time.

But then again, if I were 96 I’m sure that would be the stuff I’d buy because I’d be in the market for fizzy tooth solvent and it’s certainly a memorable commercial.

Individual toothpastes aren’t memorable because individual toothpastes don’t have unique branding.

Toothpaste in general, as a product, has branding: you take a box, add some swooshy toothpaste-like shapes, put some glitter on it, add the words “white,” “tartar” and “control” in any combination and you’re golden. Every toothpaste company is stuck in that rut and that’s why I have no idea what’s on my bathroom counter.

Sounds like the internet doesn’t it?

Today a website is a website is a website. There are thousands of new sites every day and if my own web surfing is any measure, fewer and fewer of them are worth a damn. Perhaps we’re seeing the proliferation of a new day where the unique website is dead and the best you can hope for is to buy 67 domain names, put template-based websites up and hope for your .05 cents of revenue from Adsense.

Not gonna happen.

I mean, think of how many websites you’ve ever seen since the beginning of the internet. Lots and lots.

Now tell me how many sites are in your bookmark list. See?

Now, I’m not one to say that every site has to be different and designed by a $15,000 designer. There are millions and millions of websites and obviously the line is going to blur somewhere.

But having a generic site is not enough. A plug-n-play theme is not doing you, your site or your product any good at all.

If we can’t distinguish your site from another, it’s just another toothpaste, isn’t it?

Girl Scout Marketing

Peruse the Marketing section of your local bookstore and you’ll see a lot of titles and some unusual pairings. Guerrilla Marketing, Punk Marketing, Pyro Marketing…the list goes on.

These are not bad books and if they were I wouldn’t say so, at least not now, as this post is not intended to be a review. I merely hope to assuage your marketing dilemma.

The problem with the above titles and the apparent surplus of marketing styles available to us is that they confuse something that is very very simple. They also imply that perhaps there is some hidden technique for marketing that only a punk or pyromaniac knows.

Take Biff. Biff is starting a new business (a banana stand he intends to run with his cousin) and wends his way into his local Barnes & Noble. He looks at the titles and thinks to himself, “Well, jeez. I’m not a punk so I don’t think I need to learn to market like a punk. And I’m certainly not a pyro, except for that one incident back in grade school. And guerrilla? Do I have to wear camo for that? Probably…I’m out.”

Biff gets confused and takes off. He decides he’ll just figure it all out on his own. And probably he will because Biff knows deep down that marketing is simply telling people what he’s selling.

The Backbone of Marketing

Marketing is nothing more than finding a communication line from you to your consumer and putting your product on it. That’s all it is. You can call it whatever you want: punk, pyro, elephantiasis or Aunt Jemima’s Christmas Basket, but marketing breaks down to the simple actions of:

Have a product
Find someone to tell
Find a way to tell them
Tell them

That’s marketing.

Whether you do that via TV, radio, magazine ads, internet banners or street-corner evangelism, you’re finding a communication line and putting your product on it. You can do it with a loudspeaker, by dropping turkeys out of an airplane or setting shit on fire. You can do it aggressively, loudly, expensively or all for free. How you choose to market is up to you, but without a communication line and someone receiving at the other end of it, you’re not marketing.

A Simple Real-Life Example

There’s a knock on my door, and I answer it.

On the stoop is a little girl. She’s wearing a Girl Scout uniform and she’s got a little red wagon piled high with boxes of cookies.

She says to me, “Do you want to buy some cookies?”

That’s marketing.