The Entire Marketing Industry Needs Really Good Editors

The internet and mobile devices have made it easy to produce cheap media and marketing collateral. The problem is that cheap is almost always bad.

According to the Meaningful Brands survey recently released by the agency group Havas and reported by The Drum, 60% of the world’s brands create “content” that is absolutely useless. It’s little wonder, then, that the report also found that no one would care if 74% of brands disappeared.

To solve this problem, marketing and creative directors need to view themselves today as editors and gatekeepers who prevent their brands and agencies from producing needless clutter. The entire internet needs a good editor to protect against the cheapness, quick 'hacks', and focus on quantity over quality that have all pervaded the digital world since the beginning.

'Cheap' is the enemy of 'good'

The growth of online marketing in the early 2000s occurred at the same time as the economic recession that followed the burst of the 1990s tech bubble. Just as our personalities are largely formed by the age of five, the culture of digital marketing was fostered in a climate of economic malaise.

As a result, internet marketers have always been focused on getting something cheaply and easily. There are countless how-to guides on getting more website traffic, Twitter followers and Facebook 'likes' for 'free'. Over the years, I have sat in so many meetings, interviews and consulting sessions in which terms such as 'quick wins' and 'immediate ROI' are discussed. The technologies and functionalities of the internet encourage people to focus on direct-response marketing metrics and cheap costs above all else.

[Read the rest of my first new "The Promotion Fix" column at The Drum!]

A former journalist and newspaper editor turned marketing and communications executive, Samuel Scott is Marcom Director at AI-powered log analytics software platform Logz.io, a global marketing speaker, and writer of the regular “The Promotion Fix” column in The Drum. Scott has been quoted or cited by publications including AdWeek, CIO, and Fortune. Follow him on Facebook and Twitter.