How Do We Make Marketing Less Sleazy?

Before being a marketer, I was a lawyer.  Had I done a stint as a used car salesman, I would have been able to hit the trifecta of sleaziest careers.  And yet, I’m not a sleazy guy.  By no means am I perfect, but whatever my faults, being sleazy isn’t one of them.  That’s why it still stings whenever people get that look in their eye when I tell them what I do for a living.

People are inherently distrustful of marketers, and as much as it pains me to admit it, rightfully so. In my relatively short time in the profession, I have met far too many sleazeballs.  You know the types.  The ones that seem friendly at first, but then after hours of talking at you, give you a sales pitch for something you don’t need.

Online, you might call these guys the yellow highlighter brigade (because they’re the ones that design the landing pages that have tons of yellow highlighting on them).  They’re the ones who fill up Google’s search results with gobs upon gobs of crappy landing pages for shitty products so that they can make a lousy commission.

They’re the same people that follow you on Twitter, and then you realize that they’re following 100,000 people and the only thing they tweet is generic promotional tweets, pre-scheduled, selling even more crap.  If you do make the mistake of following them back, you’ll find that in a couple of weeks, they’ll unfollow you, so that they can go follow another hapless soul without having their following:follower ratio look too out of whack.

They’re the guys who promise to teach you how to make money online, when they themselves have never made a dime online.  They’re the ones who promise to teach you how to connect with your customers when their idea of connecting is mono-directional.  They’re the ones that throw around random buzzwords and call themselves experts because they’ve read a couple of blogs, and maybe even purchased an information product or two (but probably not).  They’re the ones that would throw their closest friends under a bus to make a buck (or alternatively, sell their valued customers’ information to make a buck).

There are a lot of those guys out there.

Now, here’s the thing, there are also a whole lot of NON-sleazy marketers out there. People who are bright, articulate and driven.  People who care about their clients.  People who have a proven track record of success.  People who are interested in more than how many targets receive their e-mail blast.  People who actually give a damn, and do this marketing thing properly.

A few days ago, I was reading Mitch Joel’s blog.  I don’t know Mitch personally, but I’ve followed his blog for some time.   I’ve read his book.  I’ve heard good things about his company.  He wrote a post about Facebook’s recent privacy debacle, and took the stance that it is an incredible tool for businesses, and that ultimately it’s up to the individual to protect their own privacy (I don’t want to misquote him, so please do read the post for yourself, it’s worth the time).  I still haven’t decided how I feel about Facebook and the privacy issue (I’m not a believer that privacy is dead), but I respect Mitch’s opinion, even if I may disagree with it.

In a follow-up post, Mitch mentioned a comment from someone who basically dismissed his opinion based solely on the fact that he’s a marketer.  Let me be clear, Mitch is one of the good guys.  But can I really blame the commenter for assuming otherwise?  I know Mitch is one of the good guys because I’ve been following his work for a couple of years.  Had I stumbled upon his blog and read his opinion on Facebook, knowing all the sleazy marketers out there, I too may have dismissed that opinion.

So, here’s the problem: There are legions of sleazy marketers out there giving the good ones a bad name. There are ideas of smart people that can really help businesses that are being drowned out in torrents of crap.  And lastly, while this may not seem very important on a macro scale, there are good marketers out there who are really tired of being thought of as the scum of the earth.

My question, then, is how can the non-sleazy ones stand out from the rest?

I can already anticipate some of the answers:

• Do good work and let the results speak for themselves.
• Give away as much quality, useful information as you can.
• Point out the ones who are doing the good work.
• Grow some thicker skin.

The problem with all of the above is that they’re things that are already being done, and I get the feeling it’s not helping.  In some cases, they may be hurting the cause, because the sleazeballs just take that great content and then re-purpose it for their own sleazy uses.

As for growing thicker skin, maybe I should, but also, maybe I shouldn’t have to?

I will, however, make more of an effort to point out the ones that are doing good work.  For this post, I’m going to stick with mentioning Mitch, since he deserves the credit for inspiring this, but rest assured there are more.  Hell, I probably follow 100 of them on Twitter right now.

I’d also love to hear your thoughts on how we can change the perception of marketers, or even if we can at all?  Drop a note in the comments, or fire me off an e-mail.  This is something I really want to discuss.

I’d love for my mother not to have to worry what people will think when she tells them what I do for a living.