This is my last chance to squeeze in a Bredemarket blog post before the end of the month, so I’ll just recycle some thoughts that I previously posted on LinkedIn.
Based on some thoughts originally shared by Taylor “Taz” Rodriguez about the perils of “me-too” marketing.
Let’s all be unique
Years ago, Steve Martin had a routine in which he encouraged his audience to say, in unison, that they promise to be different and they promise to be unique.
Get it?
Apparently some present-day marketers don’t, according to Rodriguez.
If you want to SERIOUSLY grow a service-based company, you need to STOP with the generic social media captions!
We see it all day long, even on paid ads which is sad…
❌ “We help our clients stand out from the crowd!”
❌ “Our experienced team of _____ help to elevate your business!”
From https://www.linkedin.com/posts/madebytaz_marketingandadvertising-paidadvertising-socialmediamarketing-activity-7168953109514280960-9H1N/.
No, repeating the canned phrase about standing out from the crowd does NOT make you stand out from the crowd.
But wait. It gets worse.
The authenticity bot
When I reshared Rodriguez’s post, I wanted to illustrate it with an image that showed how many people use the phrase “stand out from the crowd.”
But while I couldn’t get that exact number on my smartphone search (a subsequent laptop search revealed 477 million search results), I got something else: Google Gemini’s experimental generative AI response to the question, bereft of irony just like everything else we’ve encountered in this exercise.
You see, according to Gemini, one way to stand out from the crowd is to “be authentic.”
Yes, Google Gemini really said that.
Now I don’t know about a bot telling me to “be authentic.”
Rodriguez addresses “how” and “why”
Going back to Taylor “Taz” Rodriguez’s post, he had a better suggestion for marketers. Instead of using canned phrases, we should instead create original answers to these two questions:
HOW do you help your clients stand apart from the competition?
WHY have your past & current clientele chosen to work with you?
From https://www.linkedin.com/posts/madebytaz_marketingandadvertising-paidadvertising-socialmediamarketing-activity-7168953109514280960-9H1N/.
Why not “why” and “how”?
Now I know what my Bredemarket groupies are saying at this point.
(There aren’t any Bredemarket groupies, but pretend for the moment that there are.)
Taz, “You’re Doing It Wrong™.” Because Simon Sinek insists that “why” is the most important question, “why” should take precedence over “how.”
To which I respond:
Sinek Schninek.
BOTH questions are important, both need to be addressed, and it really doesn’t matter which one you address first.
In fact, there are some very good reasons to start with the “how” question in this case. It’s wonderful for the marketer to focus on the question of how they stand apart from the competition.
And as a wildebeest lover who grasps a keyboard with my cold dead hands, and with an onboarding process that ensures Bredemarket’s content is the right content for my customers, I can certainly agree with this focus.
Even if my onboarding process does start with “why.”
But hey, if you want to address my first two questions in reverse order, go for it.
Bredemarket 