e_Marketing

I read recently that it helps to establish one's credibility as a blogger if you create an "About Me" page, and fill it with impressive sounding stuff. This is my About Me page...

I think of myself as part writer, part musician, part philosopher and part adman. But mostly adman.

My adman career began when a friend and I provided the ads between segments of a show our Grade 10 Class put on many years ago. It has continued in fits and starts ever since.

I studied philosophy in University - mostly political philosophy. But I felt especially attracted to the philosophy of education because it has always seemed to me that education has a lot in common with persuasion and propaganda and therefore with advertising.

I like advertising, think it is reasonably important, and also think far too many people are naively unware of how much their attitudes are influenced by it.

Many people think advertising is, by its very nature, manipulative, deceptive, and misleading. I don't agree.

I also don't agree with those who assume it is acceptable to mislead others as long as they don't tell out and out lies. Many people in internet marketing are like this. The claims they make are often nonsensical and completely indefensible and yet many of us think wholesale exaggeration of this sort is perfectly acceptable. Usually because we think it is not possible to distinguish between exaggeration that is informative, and exaggeration that misleads and deceives. I don't believe it is very difficult at all.

I also don't like it when people say "you are entitled to your opinion." What they mean is "I don't want to discuss this with you any further, and I am too lazy, undisciplined, or close-minded to think about this topic anymore. So you are entitled to your opinion."

Thanks. I really appreciate that.

But the truth is I do not subscribe to the theory that at some point "we must just disagree." I know most people these days believe this, but I am not one of them. This suggests that at some point dialogue must end because there is nothing we can talk about, or we are too unreasonable, too unimaginative, too lazy, or too fixated on some hidden agenda to continue talking. This is what leads to disputes and ultimately to war, and why some guys think it is better to fire missles at "implacable enemies" than to engage in dialogue with them.

Rick Hendershot,
November 25, 2007
Conestogo, Ontario, Canada