🕵️♂️ The Dark Underbelly of Marketing
Created by Jeff Nelson using ChatGPT.
[Notice the spelling of “Anduro Marksting”. Awesome.]
Or: Why Your Marketer Drinks (or Naps) at Lunch
Marketing has a reputation for being shiny, strategic, and sexy.
But peel back the layers, and what you find is a mess of chaos, caffeine (or better yet, alcohol), and crisis meetings.
Welcome to the side of marketing no one brags about on LinkedIn.
🔬 1. Marketing Is Not a Science: It Just Pretends to Be
We throw around terms like “data-driven” and “machine learning” to sound impressive, but let’s be honest, most of the time, we’re guessing.
Reality Check:
It’s closer to astrology than astronomy. But we have dashboards, so it looks awesome.
🎯 2. Most Marketing Is Educated Guessing (at best)
Campaigns are built on hypotheses, assumptions, and a whole lot of hope.
If it works, we call it a strategy.
If it fails, we call it a learning opportunity.
Translation:
“We’ll test it and see what happens” is marketing’s version of “Hold my beer.”
🔄 3. Everything Changes, Constantly
Except for client expectations
The platforms, the tools, the algorithms, the audiences; they’re all shape-shifting faster than you can say “pivot.”
But clients? Clients still want last year’s results with a budget from a decade ago.
Examples of Chaos:
• Facebook’s new targeting rules
• Google’s mysterious core updates
• TikTok trends that last 36 hours
• AI writing tools that write slightly better BS
🐢 4. Some Things Are Fast. Other Things Are Glacial.
You can create an email in less than 10 minutes, and it arrives within seconds.
But it takes months to build trust and authority (if you’re lucky).
Client Request:
“Let’s do the SEO this week and see how it performs by Friday?”
Marketer Response:
[deep sigh while lifting another glass of rye whiskey]
🤓 5. Clients Are Secret Marketing Geniuses
Every client has a cousin, a friend, or a dog groomer who once got 100 likes on a post.
Suddenly, they’re questioning your headline, your font, and why you’re not using more emojis.
Client Feedback Highlights:
“I don’t like that color. My wife says it looks aggressive.”
“Let’s make it go viral. Just do what Nike does.”
“We don’t need a blog. No one reads anymore.”
[Are you still reading? I hope so. Marketing is awesome (when it works.)]
💸 6. They Want Cheap Leads, Not Marketing
Most clients don’t want “marketing.” They want magic.
New customers, instantly, with zero spend and minimal involvement.
Their Fantasy:
“Let’s launch something small and scrappy.”
Their Reality:
Refuses to approve anything without 6 rounds of revisions and a review by the legal department.
💀 7. Google Ads: Welcome to the Hunger Games
You think Google Ads is plug-and-play?
Think again.
It’s expensive, confusing, and practically rigged to drain your budget unless you know how to navigate a jungle of hidden settings.
[Consider this visual image: “a pipe from your bank account directly to Google’s bank account”.]
Google’s Strategy:
• Suggest garbage keywords.
• Burn your money.
• Blame your landing page.
🤷♂️ Final Thought: Still Think Marketing Is Glamorous?
Marketing is thrilling, yes.
But it’s also frustrating, unpredictable, and full of people who think they know better.
If you’re in the trenches, you know.
If you’re going to hire a marketer, trust them, pay them well, and give them room to breathe.
Bonus Tip for the Pros:
Don’t ask your marketing team to “make it viral.”Ask them to develop something that’s worth reading.
PS I’m blatantly using ChatGPT for this post.