Being Human

Much of what I’ve writ­ten about recently really are about this: Being human. I just didn’t real­ize it until now. #

Last week, I had the good for­tune to present at Pecha Kucha Winnipeg with a group of excel­lent speak­ers and a fan­tas­tic audi­ence. My talk was enti­tled 3 Ways to Make Work More Human, and like many pre­sen­ta­tions had the effect of focus­ing sev­eral strands of thought per­co­lat­ing in my mind over the past while. #

I often say that “mar­keters ruin every­thing,” despite the fact that, for lack of a bet­ter term, I myself am a mar­keter. But I think this is exactly what I mean: mar­keters tend to dehu­man­ize us to get the best results, and that isn’t going to last much longer. #

It’s likely why I also often pro­claim that mar­ket­ing is dead. People are tired of being treated like num­bers or prod­ucts or audi­ences. We’re all look­ing to feel a lit­tle more human in the inter­ac­tive age. We’re not “hits” or “touch­points” or even “users.” We’re peo­ple. #

Erica wrote a nice post today, where she said: #

I’ve met so many peo­ple on Twitter that I con­sider my ambi­ent friends, but some­times find my stream a fast and lonely place. Whoever’s there at the moment are the only peo­ple that “mat­ter”, and con­ver­sa­tions and con­nec­tions evap­o­rate. If you’re quiet for a day, no one seems to notice you’re gone. It reminds me of the sheer quan­tity & speed of human­ity on a New York side­walk. #

So it’s nice—and sur­pris­ingly surprising—to just say ‘hi’ some­times. #

Why do I want 800 mil­lion blog­gers to replace 800 mil­lion Facebook users? Because blog­gers are humans. They tell sto­ries. They con­nect us in ways that “lik­ing” only emu­lates. #

This is what Occupy is all about. It’s what the web has been all about, and with any luck will con­tinue to be. #

So why am I a mar­keter then? Because I want to destroy mar­ket­ing and replace it with some­thing more human. Oddly enough, I also hap­pen to think that such an approach is also way more effec­tive now than tra­di­tional meth­ods #

Instead of increas­ing mind­share or lock­ing peo­ple into a plat­form so that they can turn human behav­iour into a com­mod­ity and sell it to the high­est bid­der, mar­keters in the future should be look­ing to help peo­ple become more human. The new mar­ket­ing is about cre­at­ing gen­uine human expe­ri­ences. #

Instead of focussing on the num­bers, we should aim to cre­ate serendip­ity. #

We’re com­ing to a point where peo­ple are con­tent to fol­low their pas­sion and make enough money to keep it going and to live hap­pily. Some of the most suc­cess­ful busi­nesses these days are just tiny, bring­ing a tiny breath of human expe­ri­ence to the peo­ple around them. They are pro­foundly human endeav­ours that don’t need to scale to some enor­mous size, they just want to do what they do and scale as needed in an organic—and human—way. #

Much of my work is cen­tred on this prin­ci­ple. My approach has always been about organ­i­cally con­nect­ing peo­ple to other peo­ple. Humanity is sus­tain­able; ever-​increasing profit with no other goal is not. #

In addi­tion to Erica, I’d like to give a shout out to Matt Wiebe, Brian Reich, Ian Stewart and Dave Winer for being par­tic­u­larly human recently (even if I do dis­agree with Brian’s com­ments about #OWS—his book is think­ing in the right direc­tion). There are way more, but those five have been writ­ing and engag­ing in projects in a par­tic­u­larly human way recently. Without them, I don’t think this post could have been writ­ten. #

I intend to keep pro­mot­ing blog­gers and projects and busi­nesses here that do just that. Let me know if you have any more great exam­ples. #