[Originally posted on NewCommBiz]
We’ve all seen it. Â The website that proudly proclaims the awesomeness of the new product, the brand, the campaign. Â The one that wants to give you a chance to be a part of the awesomeness! The one who invites you to submit your email address to get updates about awesome new things happening around this awesome product!
The tone-deaf “we love ourselves, so you must love us” content that makes a lot of us cringe as we are assumed to be a member of a mindless ever loyal, interested and open-walleted army known as “our consumers”.
I’ve figured out what makes it so uncomfortable to experience.
It’s marketing masturbation.
It’s a selfish, indulgent, isolating, base  activity acted upon purely for the benefit of oneself.  It’s based on the toxic myth of ‘us vs them’.
Basically, you’re unwillingly watching a company jerk off.
If you drop trou and do that in front of a subway car full of people, you get arrested. It’s an assault. You’re forcing unwilling and non-consenting individuals to be involved in your own self-centered fetish.
Do it in an ad campaign or a website, however, and you get featured in Ad Age.
Yuck. Â Put that thing back in your pants, dude.
Jeremy Meyers is an Engagement Strategist at Waggener Edstrom and also blogs at JeremyMeyers.com. He does not like potato chips.
