experts

I’m not a talented writer. In fact, in many ways I’m pretty lousy. I’m a miserable typist—capable of  little better than hunt and peck—only have a vague idea about where to put punctuation and no matter how much I proofread, I always end up with typos.

Dr. John Dawes nails it. In a white paper titled Marketing Gurus and Fads – how to avoid them, Dawes writes:

“Marketing abounds with ‘fads’ – which over-promise and under-deliver. These messages are sometimes presented as the ‘secrets’ of companies that are supposedly fantastically successful at the moment. The sad fact is that most of these messages are incredibly over-optimistic and at worst, downright deceitful.”

In 1798, there were about a billion people in the world and economist Thomas Malthus predicted that overpopulation would lead to war and famine. In 1968, at 4 billion people, scientists published The Population Bomb and The Limits to Growth, which predicted the same.

I’d like to start this conversation by getting us mindful to a definition:

Around the world, it's becoming easier than ever to sell your human capital - the sum total of your knowledge, experiences and talents - to the highest bidder. Using new P2P marketplaces like Sidetour and Gidsy, you can sell a lifetime’s worth of experiences and memories the same way you might sell a pair of used shoes. Using educational marketplaces like Skillshare, you can sell your esoteric knowledge to people with an interest in a specific topic.

I know I shouldn’t get angry, this is not done. Yet, the recent flurry of self-proclaimed “experts” in the Social Media arena is more than getting on my nerves; it is purely and simply making my life – and the lives of my fellow practitioners – impossible and it makes us wonder how much you can get away with in that business? Hold on, it reminds me of something …

(NOTE: This essay draws on a chapter in my new book, Bright Lights & Dim Bulbs, which identifies nine radical branding and marketing insights for innovative business leaders to watch in 2010).

Recently colleague Peter Kim and myself found ourselves in close contact with a "social media expert". The problem is this expert was sucking in the feed of my blog without permission, attribution and had more holes in his resume than a slice of Swiss cheese. So how do you separate the social media snake oil from the vinegar? It's not easy, but here's a few pointers:

by: Jonathan Salem Baskin

The Scientist magazine reported last week that pharma giant Merck had invented its own peer review medical journal in order to better hype its products; of 29 articles, almost two-thirds referred to Fosamax or Vioxx.

And we're surprised?

by: Jonathan Salem Baskin

The Wall Street Journal dedicated a special section in yesterday's paper to "The Secrets of Marketing in a Web 2.0 World," and made five shockingly novel revelations: