Well folks, the cyber-hustlers are at it again. Those digital doofuses who have no marketing expertise but call themselves marketers.

This image has been chasing me around social media for a while, promoting something that doesn’t exist in marketing ‘paid advertising‘.

Advertising by its very definition is media that has been paid for. The marketer buys time or space and controls the message content. I suspect the author really means “Paid Media”, but is not experienced enough to know the difference.

Here’s the modern marketing parlance for media labels:

Paid media – which is all advertising. Marketers pay for time or space and own the content of the advertisement in any media.

Owned media – which includes advertising but also websites, signage, sponsorship, events, trade stands, marketing collateral, sales presentations, point of sale etc – any analogue or digital marketing assets.

Earned media – traditionally public relations, but now includes any marketing content shared or commented about in analogue or digital channels, by experts, journalists, commentators and to a lesser extent in terms of credibility, influencers and social media connections.

And now, the aim of marketers is to get as much of your paid, owned and earned media to become shared media – in analogue and digital channels. To use another recent buzzword, this amplifies your message. There are many examples of brands earning $Millions and even $Billions of media value as a result of their marketing messages being shared, or ‘going viral’.

But let’s unpack the ‘paid advertising’ sponsored message, as it reveals amateurs played a big role in its creation:

The first sentence has a typo: “We’ve brought together some greatest minds…” – it should read: “We’ve brought together some of the greatest minds…“

But who are these minds you ask?

Why is the fact the author has studied a medium size advertising agency worth noting? $63 million and 19 accounts – agencies of this size have been operating for decades. What’s significant?

The final subheading differs from the rest: “The state of advertising in 2022” – what happened to “paid advertising“?

Just as headlines that start with “The art of <insert subject matter here>” are a complete waste of time, so too are headlines that start with “The state of <insert subject matter here>“

They are glib and weak, reflecting the fact no thought has gone into the piece of communication.

But given the declining expertise in modern marketers, many may not notice the errors. For all I know the event went well – though I suspect a better headline might have been:

“FREE 5-Hour Seinfeld workshop – the workshop about nothing”