The Emperor's New Clothes

Here at the moose pen we often "shoot the breeze" about all those silly expressions bandied about in business. Why do we need "forward planning"? Isn't plain old fashioned "planning" good enough? And these "very unique" products, well don't get me started on that one!

Today the discussion turned its sights specifically on the marketing business and how so many apparent revolutions in techniques are simply a new way of using tried and tested tools.

"Content marketing" is one of the big things at the moment. It's a convenient term, defined by the  Content Marketing Institute as

the marketing and business process for creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire, and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience – with the objective of driving profitable customer action.

Let's compare that with good old-fashioned copywriting. The definition in Wikipedia is

written content conveyed through online media and print materials. Copy is content primarily used for the purpose of advertising or marketing. This type of written material is often used to persuade a person or group as well as raise brand awareness.

So what's the difference? I'd have to say "not a lot". I think there's technically more to Content marketing in that there's more focus on web-related activities that aim to draw people towards your content rather than a more active broadcast approach. But that's really a tactical detail.

And how about "database marketing"? Didn't we used to call that mail merge? OK so there's some new tech that makes it possible to do more at less cost, but it's really the same thing.

New terminology is fine as long as it has a purpose other than attempting to confuse those who are not in the know. As you know, here in the moose barn we're keen to keep things as simple as possible. Now where did I put that agile tool for the specialist handling and programmatic assistance with moose droppings...