Are you getting buried by the stylized persona?

Too short to be a blog post, too important to ignore, here are five random observations from the world of marketing …

1. The stylized persona

My friend Minter Dial recently suggested to me that one of the biggest threats to the marketing field is the “stylized persona” — social media expectations that dictate how we should be, what we should say, and even how we look.

This is a wise observation. I am overwhelmed by the boring sameness on social media these days, especially people who are trying to be social media thought leaders. Few of the people who cry “authenticity!” are really authentic. They are all working to achieve this stylized persona. Nobody is really speaking the truth. Nobody disagrees with anything. Most content is rinse and repeat.

The early days of social media were marked by bold thought leaders who were a little bit crazy. It was sort of “Yellowstone” social media. They were adventurous, audacious, and above all, INTERESTING.

Where are the people with a spiky point of view? Who out there has the courage to be a non-conformist?

The world doesn’t need another Top 10 List of helpful content tips. We need you to say something important and original.

Perhaps an extreme example of this stylized persona is the standard “Instagram Look” that is emerging, driving up demand for plastic surgery at younger and younger ages. Everybody is even starting to LOOK the same!

Is social media driving the death of originality?

2. The Metaverse is already here

We all need to be immersing ourselves in new ideas and technologies that will be impacting marketing and nothing is buzzing more than the Metaverse.

While this seems like some far-off vision, in this video I contend that it is already here and there is an easy way to start to imagine how this might impact your business and customers …

3. A COVID silver lining

There is a lot to gripe about during a pandemic. But there is a silver lining.

COVID disrupted life-long habits and patterns. It made people re-consider their health, careers, and relationships. we are discovering, or re-discovering, our sources of joy and creating new priorities. I think there will be a surge of positive outcomes from that disruption!

85 percent of US consumers adopted new buying behaviors during the pandemic. This is a time when people are changing habits and are open to new products and services. It is an important time for new marketing opportunities.

4. Creator community update

A few weeks ago I chronicled my early experience launching a creator coin on the Rally.io platform. It has been quite the learning experience and my $RISE token is growing and providing steady community rewards. This week, more than $10,000 was distributed to my community.

I was invited to attend a small meeting this week Rally CMO Bremner Morris and a few other creators. We had a first-hand view of Rally’s strategy and an opportunity to provide our input about the platform.

Major takeaways:

Rally went through a tremendous transformation in late 2021, installing an entirely new leadership team and transitioning from building a functional global platform to a focus on creator success. There has been a tremendous surge in momentum due to an ambitious and focused team finally being in place.

Bremner articulated four 2022 strategy pillars:

Supporting creator community growth by enabling better landing pages, functionality, and customization
Increasing token utility by building templatized use cases that will create more community benefits
Building an infrastructure that reduces the friction of onboarding new community members and their transactions
Refining Rally positioning to make it less “techy,” friendlier, and accessible to people just learning about tokenized economies.

I left the meeting feeling extremely positive about Rally and confident that it will be beneficial to be an early adopter of this Web3 platform.

5. Department of Unintended Consequences

I’ve written about how the unintended consequence of the pandemic will recreate our business world in so many crazy ways. One area ripe for innovation is the permanent shift to remote work. What happens when employees in a department are always alone and disconnected?

Will there be an emotional detachment from people and workspaces that will further diminish and sense of loyalty?
Workplace friendships often lead to long-term alliances and collaborations. That may be lost.
WIll people in the workplace be more likely to be promoted than remote employees who are far less known? Is this a new source of inequality, or will it amplify old ones?
How do we compensate for the lack of innovation when we don’t have the random collision of people and ideas in the office?
Are companies resourcing to coach, support, and enable remote work and address some of these issues? Is that a whole new career specialty?

The challenge for all of us is to not just take these pandemic changes at face value but to carefully think through the consequences for our businesses.

I am a person who feels deeply. It’s hard to watch helplessly as a dictator imposes his war machine on innocent families.

If you want to help Ukraine militarily, the National Bank of Ukraine has a special fund set up. Instructions for donations are here; you will need some background in how to do SWIFT transfers. It doesn’t take long, but it does take a wire transfer service.

If you want to help Ukraine non-militarily, the Red Cross and Red Crescent of Ukraine is in urgent need of donations for helping the injured.

Thank you.

Keynote speaker Mark Schaefer Mark Schaefer is the executive director of Schaefer Marketing Solutions. He is the author of some of the world’s bestselling digital marketing books and is an acclaimed keynote speaker, college educator, and business consultant. The Marketing Companion podcast is among the top business podcasts in the world. Contact Mark to have him speak to your company event or conference soon.