This Is Marketing: You Cant Be Seen Until You Learn to See

Hiring a professional

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The internet is littered with websites, emails, and videos made by amateurs.
Amateurs who made something that they liked.
Which is fine.
But what a professional does for you is design something that other
people will like. They create a look and feel that reminds people of their
sort of magic.
There’s not one professional look, not one right answer. A summer
blockbuster gives itself away in four frames of film—it’s clearly not a
YouTube video from a teen makeup guru.
Every once in a while, the amateur happens to find a vernacular that
reminds the right people of the right story. The rest of the time, it’s best to
do it with intent.
Imagine that world . . .
Don LaFontaine made more than five thousand movie and TV voice-overs.
It’s not because he was more talented at speaking than anyone else, or
because he was the cheapest. It’s because his head start compounded, and if
a studio chief wanted to remind the audience of a big-time movie, his voice
could do that, precisely because he was reminding you of his earlier work.
It’s important to remember that it doesn’t matter what you, the marketer
who created it, is reminded of. Semiotics doesn’t care who made the
symbol. The symbol is in the mind of the person looking at it.
And it’s even more important to remember that there’s no one right
answer. The symbol that works for one group won’t work for another. In
Silicon Valley, the hoodie is a symbol of status (I’m too busy to go clothes
shopping). In a different context, though, for a different audience, a hoodie
in East London might put someone on alert instead of reassuring them.
Why is Nigerian spam so sloppy?
If you’ve gotten an email from a prince offering to split millions of dollars
with you, you may have noticed all the misspellings and other telltale clues
that it can’t possibly be real.

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Why would these sophisticated scammers make such an obvious
mistake?
Because it’s not for you. Because they’re sending a signal to people who
are skeptical, careful, and well-informed: go away.
The purpose of the email is to send a signal. A signal to the greedy and
the gullible. Because putting anyone else into the process just wastes the
scammer’s time. They’d rather lose you at the beginning than invest in you
and lose you at the end.