Sometimes I think that people in the MarCom field are simply incapable of understanding the basics. Case in point: Phil Myers skates around the real problems in marketing with this:

What's important is that it surfaces an interesting perspective that I've always wanted to talk about with regards to marketing. One of the reasons that marketing isn't trusted (and there are at least five others) is that it's motives are not pure. Far too often, we spend money on things that fall into this general category of 'awareness of the brand'. Hard to argue with the need but it creates an opening for programs that are ego-driven, notoriety-driven, personal fulfillment-driven, and creativity-driven.

The problem is way, way simpler than that, and doesn't have anything to do with the motives of the people in marketing. It has to do with a complete knowledge gap between the marketing people and the people who create the product/service being sold. You can have all the authenticity and purity of motive possible, but if you don't understand your company's products, you're still not going to get anywhere.

Here are few simple things marketing departments do that are simply useless. The best that can be said about these things is that they don't actively do harm:

• No one cares who your CEO is. Really - if his name isn't Steve Jobs, they really don't. They aren't buying your CEO, they're buying your product
• No one cares about the "storied history" of your company, beyond the simple fact that longevity implies safety.
• People don't think of themselves as leads, and if your website treats them that way, they'll leave in droves

What are people looking for when they come to your website, or look at some of your marketing collateral? Information. What problem(s) do you solve with your product/service, and how do you solve them? Why is your solution better than the next guy's? How can people make use of your product/service? If that kind of information is hard to find, then whatever you do have available is irrelevant.

Authenticity matters, but only if it's connected to real information.

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