Let’s get rid of this whole Marketing thingy. I mean, after watching the following video, it should become apparent how hopelessly useless it is:
So what we have here is a guy, who seems to be very good at the game Call of Duty: Back Ops. He is so good actually that he manages to kill 38 people in a match without getting killed even once. He records these videos and puts them up under the silly name Seananners on YouTube. So far so good. Only that instead of bloating about what this says about the size and volume of his genitals, he choses to record his thoughts and comments about philosophy and ethics and put them in the background. So in this video he points out how everything humans experience is only temporary and how this can be depressing but also can make you appreciate life even more.
And yeah, ok, that’s weird but there are weirder things if you look for them on the Internet. Only that this guy is REALLY popular. This video alone has been watched half a million times. He has 190 of them. He is so popular that as we speak he is the top nominee for the Shorty awards in the category for Gaming. He even outmatches the crazy popular gaming celebrity Day9.
What does it have to do with Marketing? Well the thing is that this kind of success is completely unattainable by any market research techniques. There is NOTHING any Maketing person could have done to create or even predict this. Even if they had a hunch, they would have send out questionnaires and made focus group test to see how much Call of Duty players enjoy philosophy. How much do the target groups for Call of Duty and philosophy overlap?
Clue train: they don’t! Because target groups are idiotic constructs that utterly fail at describing people. The reason why the Seananners channel works is because it is honest and genuine. Because it doesn’t treat the audience like vending machines. It doesn’t look for the right buttons to press. It treats them like real people. And real people are almost infinitely flexible. Real people can appreciate sick Call of Duty skills and casual philosophy at the same time.
Actually it wasn’t done without marketing. Senanners marketed himself, made his name a brand and expanded it through saliency and repetition.
The exact same processes all marketing campaigns go through be they offline, online or otherwise.
People often mistake the process of marketing as only existing within penthouse conference rooms with men in suits who have no idea about the audience they are selling to.
But marketing extends to everything that is done to enhance your name and presence. Its form is more than TV advertising, its handing out fliers, its posting YouTube videos and letting people know of them, its the positive word of mouth you generate through your activities.
I also suggest expanding your knowledge of what marketers do and how big the field is.
This…
“Clue train: they don’t! Because target groups are idiotic constructs that utterly fail at describing people. The reason why the Seananners channel works is because it is honest and genuine. Because it doesn’t treat the audience like vending machines. It doesn’t look for the right buttons to press. It treats them like real people.”
…suggests an extremely ill-informed view point on marketing. The expectation that target groups are the key form of currency in marketing is a sign you’ve been watching too much Mad Men.
It may be cool to attack marketing en masse – it is far from a sacred cow after all – but if you are going to do it please know what you are talking about. Rather than perpetuate baseless inaccuracies that may have had some worth 90 years ago you can actually contribute to the discussion rather than sit on the sidelines and sling mud.
Apologies if this post sounds ranty but you have, in your post, attacked an entire profession with a) ammunition that isn’t ammo (social media marketing is exactly what SeaNanners did whether he knew it or not) and b) an extremely outdated, outmoded view of what marketing involves.
Thank you Nathan for saying what I could not with the eloquence and knowledge I did not posses.
Do you know Seananners personally? Do you know for a fact that this is the exact process he planned and went trough?
Or is it rather that he just uploaded a bunch of videos and they caught on for the mentioned reasons and he naturally drifted into a position where he is doing what YOU as a marketing person call “branding”, “saliency”, “repetition” but actually has nothing to do with the fact WHY he got where he is?
You know, first I almost felt bad about you calling me out on this because you are right – target groups are an old concept. But then I realized you promoted “branding”, “saliency” and “repetition” and now I don’t feel so bad anymore.
But you are right in that Marketing is an easy target and I went into rant mode myself without even having a good reason. Marketing seems to suffer from image problems. Maybe you could use some … beter marketing. XD (see what I did there?)
In all seriousness, I don’t mind hearing a response from a person more close to the industry, I’m eager to learn about your perspective on this subject. I would just like to ask you to tone down the ad hominem a notch or two. Your speculations about my marketing knowledge are far off-target and don’t really “contribute to the discussion” either.
Instead I would like to hear what kind of market research you think could have created a similar YouTube channel or even predicted it’s success. I believe there is a deep inherent incompatibility between the very nature of what Seananners is doing and the ideology of Marketing.
I’m a mechanical engineer doing some marketing subjects this semester. From the stuff that was taught, I think it is possible to analyse the success of these videos. There are lots of marketing theories to explain what has happened. However, I’m not sure the stuff they teach can lead you to make certain actions. Lots of mistakes are covered, and in hindsight, its easy to use the theory to explain why it failed. But I’m sure the same theory was used to make the case FOR the very same actions.
I have to agree with Krystian with his observations. I have followed Seananners for several years and I don’t really believe this was his plan. I know that him and another guy named Hutch were the first two that introduced me “Machinima”. Both of these guys have gone from making video’s at home to working for an interesting company. I also agree that their draw is that they talk about interesting topics and share information about themselves. Having never met either individuals, but feel I know both of them really well.
I also have over 10 years experience working with marketing folks in the IT industry. My history has been that for every good marketing person, the other 50 are just looking to market you and take your money without providing much value to your product.
Marketing has also been a hobby of mine and I love creative marketing campaigns, but again, they are few and far between. I believe Seananners, Hutch, and others like them along with the internet are the future of marketing. With the tech savvy generations coming into the money producing stage, magazines, television, and other forms of traditional marketing will fall by the wayside.
Anyway, interesting article and I just wanted to throw my 2 cents in.
“… wasn’t done without marketing. Senanners marketed himself… ”
And he did it by using marketing. Everybody join hands and say “marketing.” Although, I don’t think SeaNanners did anything like “marketing” intentionally.
“made his name a brand,”
Oh, now that’s admirable. Really impressive ethics. SeaNanners should just declare, “Not only have I traded in my real name for a made up moniker but, now I am the brand SeaNanners. Damn it, I’m not a man I’m a brand!”
“and expanded it,”
Expanded his brand? SeaNanners didn’t expand a thing. A passive verb will do. His brand was expanded for him, by his audience. That he found an audience of any size makes me swoon. Hegel was right we are a doomed lot.
“through saliency,”
As opposed to being relevant? SeaNanners is really on top of this marketing profession. And here I thought it might be a bad thing that SeaNanners is so completely fulfilled by his skill at a video war game.
He actually believes a newsreel of his ersatz killing spree is so wonderful that it should impress the world. He’s delusional, believing he is actually participating in life and succeeding. So much so that now his daily musings on life are sounding so important in his own head that he must record them. Wow, what a meaningful backdrop for his broadcast demonstration of incredible pseudo skill.
Assuming he did market that, which he obviously did not. Success is worse than failure. It is really a scary signal of our market watching, primping in the mirror, war ignoring times.
How good in any way, is listening to this guy rambling sophomorically while showing the world how incredibly good, not just good but, better than anyone he is at video war? And what’s worse, calling the fact that he has an audience success. Those that are playing along with the idea that he’s skilled and philosophical?
Skip the rhetoric. He’s a fucking idiot not fit to man the cash register at a convenience store, from where I sit. As are his admirer’s. Although, some people are tuning in to Youtube to marvel at his craziness.
“I’m a mechanical engineer doing some marketing subjects this semester. From the stuff that was taught, I think it is possible to analyse [sic] the success of these videos.”
So much for engineering college. They make you solve real problems. Over there, your designs work or they don’t. And just like you, I can contrive any number of analyses for why SeaNanners is popular. Until I can make them work they’re just so much talk. Pretty useless.
“With the tech savvy generations coming into the money producing stage, magazines, television, and other forms of traditional marketing will fall by the wayside.”
We can only hope that the marketing in “magazines, television, and other forms of traditional marketing” falls by the wayside. Then, maybe the magazines, television and other media will be sources of information for a change.
How sad though, that they’ve reached the “money producing stage.” So much for the carefree days of being a mere human.
But, tech-savvy? You mean those kids wandering around campus texting and playing angry-birds on their cell phones? I doubt those are the skills that are going to make the world a better place. Their laziness however, may contribute more than anything they might do intentionally.
As for important new stuff coming out of the Computer “Science” (cough) Department, don’t hold your breath.
Marketing’s main product has been to get the CS folks to use Java Script to get more in our faces. In fact so in our faces that it’s made marketing, sales, advertisers, call them what you like, the most hated profession in my household, on my couch.
I’ve quit cable TV, thanks to crazy marketing schemes and apparent greed. Lousy reality TV with oodles of product placement and ads scrolling across the bottom of my screen for another stupid show. Need I mention the interminable commercial breaks full of repetition, that so loved anchor of the marketing profession?
Marketing is bullshit. It’s a profession for evangelists and door to door salesmen who lack the guts to face failure in a half opened doorway.