There is this joke, based on real world events, that tells a lot about the effectiveness of marketing. In this a man is asked how he thinks about advertising, in general. And he answers firmly: "I don't care for advertisement, it does not influence me at all. Because I only buy A-brand stuff." In the time when I worked for a publicity agency part of the fun was associating with others about campaign ideas. At one point we wondered whether we could take consumerism to its most absurd form. What would that be? The owner of the agency did not care for these kind of mind games, so we did that in our spare-time, don't worry. At the end of the day, in our flexible stretched hours, we delivered what we were supposed to. Sometimes even more!

What would that consumerism stretched to its limits be? And then I thought of this weird idea. Why not sell anything at all, just the idea of purchasing stuff and go. That would be the essence of consumerism; BUY and BYE! Maybe call the branche that is the last one left on earth: BUB, or 2BUB, to Buy, Bye! "Did you go to BUB?" Commercials showing things that subconsiously makes people want to Buy, Bye! We had a lot of laughs associating with this concept. And basicly it is what marketing is about. Selling something to an audience so they will buy it. How to get an idea, a product, a service into the world, and people picking up on it. Just talking wont sell, there needs to be some proof, some evidence that it is true what seems to be promised.

The Google smart

Somewhere I read that Steem should be advertised. And SteemIt Incorporated should cough up the dough for that. No, I do disagree strongly on that. The blockchain system that is Steem should not even be under control of a private company. So the crowdsource idea of marketing would make sense, if SteemIt Incorporated also released the roadmap for making the Steem blockchain Free Open Source. It would speed up developement. Come on, ever heard of Android, or Linux? Even Apple uses Free Open Source to make closed sourced products. And are they doing bad because of that? Did you know there is a big chance you are using the Free Open Source operating system Linux constantly, without even knowing it...?

And how about the succes story of Google? Whether you like it or not, their search engine took the internet by storm. And did they advertise, did they have a billion dollar costing marketing campaign? No, the irony of the company selling advertising space, is that they themselves never made use of it. Kuddos to Google: "To BUY, BYE!" in action there. But, how did they do it, if not with the help of commercials, huge publicity campaigns, how did they become market leader over night, hands down? They had an idea, a funky brand name and they were still at campus. Already they had tested their internet search engine and saw that it did it fast. The interface lovely simple. So, how to market this on a students budget?

The brilliance of their marketing plan was simplicity. Just ask a few student friends to try it. That's it. There was a need to find things on the internet, fast and efficient. If Google had the better engine to do this, then it would prove itself. How? Well, the best thing in society is mouth to ear advertising. (Works the other way around too, mind you.) On a student campus that even will move faster if you want to spread new or improved technology. Young people tend to be more progressively minded and easy pick up simple new technology. Do you disagree that young minds are so more open to change? What are your thoughts on SNAP for instance? Don't tell me you do not know what that is... ;-)

Social Media platform should not need advertising campaigns

The smart people behind Google may not even have planed this marketing. Just maybe they thought they made some cool internet crawling engine and found the most efficient database search algorythms. So, what you do, you share that with friends, family and community. From there it took off really well, now I think we can agree on that. And SNAP, an App that mostly young people prefer to use. Taking a photo snapshot, or shooting a short film, put it on SNAP and after a while it disappears again. And there is a scoring system, who do you SNAP the most with, and you have to keep it going or lose your score? Just like with GOOGLE, their App name became a verb.

Do I like SNAP? No, I do not see any logical use in it, but then again, that tells you I'm at that grumpy age where conservatism has become a way of life. Yet, I do understand that SNAP and more older things like INSTAGRAM, TWITTER and FB did not need advertising or huge marketing campaigns. There are people that want their browser to start with the GOOGLE page, because that is the only portal to the internet. It does not matter if that is true, it only shows the impact the Google search engine had. And you can shout out all you want about how Steem should be promoted, to become a succes, if you leave out the GOOGLE factor, then it won't work at all. It is a Social Media platform and that should spread from mouth to ear, like a snowball becoming an avalanche while rolling down the slope of a mountain.

And I do dislike the: "Post and get Payed" idea. Because it delivers a very strong suggestive promise, that can backfire so easily when it does not deliver. That is bad marketing there for you, they wont even want to buy it, it would be: "Bye, not interested!" Also the current setup is unfit to spread the Steem availble to even get close to a "Post and get Payed" system. There are 46 Legend level accounts, in a total of 145.000, that hold 64% of the capital. And 84% of the capital is held by 280 accounts... Which is connected to their voting influence. Now, I can honestly state that I can not sell that to my real life social network as being: "Post and get Payed!" Let me leave it at that there really is room for improvement there.

Steem to be something that is able to sell itself

The way other Social Media Platforms and other internet related things got famous is becauce of real life social networking backing it. Sometimes when I'm going to the shopping center of the small town I live in I'm bugged by smooth talking 'lookers' that want to give me a free newspaper. Of course trying to get me to fall for their little trap, selling me a great deal, newspaper for 4 weeks, only costing me 1 euro. It is a dying business and I see them already from far, dodging their tactics up front. It is a way for a student to get some extra income. But they could get to Steem for that? No... Because the promise does not prove itself and that leads to bad mouth to ear.

And now even good frequent posters, attracting attention of others, are leaving the platform. That is bad advertising there, and it does not help to go at them with aggression or flagging them massively. As it has been done recently, even at the original creator of the Steem blockchain. For a platform that is supposed to be for the Free Minded, the freedom of expression loving an caring, some did some bad marketing. As if others should decide about if anybody can have a change of heart. Of course there was, luckily, a massive proof of support too. That to me was a reason to stick around, keeping focussed on Steem becoming Free Open Source, a social media platform on a blockchain, where freedom of expression lives and breathes.

Now that is something that I want to sell to the public. But I cannot yet, because there is a kind of oligarchy control structure that I disapprove of strongly. And I love Free Open Source, it is about collaborating, one united humanity, where we can be equivalent and also unique. Now that is the hope what kept me at this platform until now. And probably will a little while longer.

But in order for this unique freedom of expression platform on a blockchain to become wide spread, it needs to sell itself. It needs to be that little seed that gets carried by the wind and bees to spread all over the world. And then to bloom, to spread even more seed. This, as far as I see, can only be done by mouth to ear advertising, that proves itself. That is a point where I see a need for many improvements. Like when a good friend of mine asked me: "Can I upvote your post and get you a reward right away?" And I ended up telling him a complex story about a reward pool and voting strength. That made me think while I told him: "Ah, now I get it, this makes no sense at all, this won't sell well at all..."

It ended with "Never mind, how is that new project you are working on evolving so far...?" Bottom line here? It is still way too complex and also inconsistent with what it suggests in the marketing of the Steem concept.

Mouth to ear needs to work pro Steem

This is something that worried me a bit when I saw posts pass by that were a kind of dictating how it should be that Steem should be promoted. In a way that it got me a bit in an ironical mood. A freedom of expression platform that starts to dictate its users how to behave, what to post? And the more Steem Power that is backed by that kind of ideas, the more impact these dictates would have. Now, if you are competing in a challenge that will come with some rules, that I get. And then you can decide wether or not you want to participate.

Steem is a Social Media platform on a public blockchain that gives freedom of expression a voice. And I think that somewhere in there lies the key to its succes. We do have enough censorship on all these central controlled platforms. If I wanted huge stake holders cutting my income, because they think I am being bad for their investment, then I would be more active there. It should not be that way here, because that would make Steem also a private company controlled public ledger. The only difference being that the database is a blockchain with a lot of real time backups. Therefore I think there is absolutely room for improvements, so I'm still here, giving you my thoughts on Steem.

To BUY, BYE!

If Steem does become the mouth to ear advertisement that sells then it will bloom fast. It has the capacity, the 1-2-3-BLOCK, it can scale, it has a future potential. Things that would help a lot already is that SteemIt Dot Com had internationalisation just like the eSteem App. And mouth to ear can only work in the right way, attracting attention, if it has something that stands out. That says: "I'm on STEEM!" Or that in conversations would lead to talk like: "STEEMED it last night." No matter what some slang states it also could mean. The brand STEEM should be stronger than that.

Steem, to me, is so much more than the 'to Buy, Bye!' marketing for consumerism taken to extremes idea. It can be the ultimate platform for freedom of expression and that is what I would like to promote. And how about you?

Have a good one!

image "to BUY, BYE!" cc-by-sa @oaldamster

Edit: Snap! Had an idea, what about a Steem engagement score? Think it was already suggested. Probably was, but then considered as a reminder added.