An Online Snakeoil Charm Offensive

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Do not tell me you’d buy a car from the guy in the photo above. Oh please don’t shatter my already weakened perceptions. Surely he is the personification of a snakeoil salesman. I mean look at the pose.

All he is bound to see in you and I is a great big red ‘SUCKER’ stamped across our foreheads. He just knows there is a fool born every minute and all they do is wait for us to succumb to their slick ‘n sleazy call, join the queue and fall for the snakeoil charm offensive to encourage us to part with some of our hard-earned cash.

And apparently we do. By the million.

Where this line of thought came from, I do not know. Suddenly it was just there. It all started earlier in the week while browsing blogs online. After a while I had a crazy thought about the online marketing phenomenon. It was not as if I’d been focussed on marketing blogs. I was not. So I started to gather my thoughts and began committing them yesterday into 1st draft form.

So far so good. I had an idea, and so wrote the opening and a bit of the body. Cool. Things were on the up and I thought I’d continue to add flesh to the piece today/tonight and publish it tomorrow. But as we all know from experience, fate deals us all some foul blows at the most inappropriate moments during our lives.

Well, I would hardly call what happened to me a foul blow. Far from it. It was a delicious surprise! I was mulling over how I am constantly amazed at the volume of the trumpet blowing marketers engage in. And then much to my chagrin, I recognised that I am envious of bloggers who do pimp themselves. I am prevented from doing this for myself by certain Calvinistic traits which I am trying unsuccessfully to have excommunicated. I accept that marketers and self-promotoing snakoil charmers are skilled and necessary to the economy, but a blight on society nontheless. I accept and respect their professionalism and the years they have spent honing their craft through study and practice. I accept, respect and admire them for what they do and I accept that they need to advertise their services from time to time.

Afterall, they do not do it all the time but when they do - it can turn me right off the marketing discipline. I do not know why the word ‘tacky’ springs to mind, but it does.

And yes, I engage in the same practice as they do. I’m doing it now. Badly. You do too but not as badly as I do. In fact we non-pro marketers do it everytime we write a blog. If you don’t you ought to. C’mon in - the water is icky, and tacky but warm!

This piece is not aimed at any specific blogger or marketer. And I am not saying that what they do is illegal or wrong. All I am trying to do is comment about the seeming eagerness and silver-tongued, slick and easy readiness with which online snakeoil salesmen are willing to trumpet their own wonderfulness in articles.

Damn they are good. Darn I am envious.

I must learn their magic then go on an online snakeoil charm offensive too.

UPDATE:
Well you can blow me over with a feather! Go read what Seth writes here. This is another thing that the famous do so well. Funny how it all turns out so well. Nice article. Very interesting insight.

An Online Snakeoil Charm Offensive