I recently came across this video of Penn Gillette recounting his experience of a Christian man coming up to him after a performance and giving him a Bible.
There are a couple reasons that this stuck with me. First was that I am a Christian and I can whole-heartedly agree with Gillette (an outspoken atheist) that if you really believe in something (in this case, Jesus Christ), you will share your beliefs because, otherwise, you’re not being loving to other people by offering them what you think is of benefit to them.
From evangelism to marketing
The more I thought about that, the more I realized that there are parallels to the world of marketing.
So often, people see marketing as annoying, which has driven many marketers to feel almost apologetic about the fact that they’re marketing to a person. That leads them to sometimes use “underhanded” tactics so that they won’t be found out or seen as an annoying marketer. They try to hide the fact that they are marketing.
The thing is, if we truly believe in the company/product/cause we are marketing, shouldn’t we be thrilled to tell people about it?
Shouldn’t we want to tell everyone we can because we truly believe that what we are offering will improve their life?
And if we don’t feel that way, shouldn’t we market something else?
Sure, there still standards to meet and belif in your product isn’t an excuse to spam the world, but I agree with Merlin Mann when he says that we must First, care.
