TL;DR
I don’t like marketing. But with some semantic acrobatics, I’ve tricked myself into liking it anyway. A tiny bit.
It’s More Than Just a Stack of Bricks
For 94% of my life, I believed (assumed) that a successful business was all about infrastructure. Have a product, a place to store it and a way to sell it. Voila, business.
Nah-uh. I’ve learned the expensive way that infrastructure is business no more than a motor is a car. A smooth, solid and streamlined infrastructure is the bare minimum just to start the initial attempt to conduct business. An infrastructure in a vacuum is locked in stasis and matters so little that it nearly ceases to exist.
Okay, So What Next?
I don’t know. This is the high water mark of my experience, knowledge and assumptions. I’ve never been here before. I’ve never made it this far.
I suspect, however, that the next step is marketing. And that idea fills me with dread. I dislike the idea of marketing for a couple of reasons:
- I don’t understand it; it feels too slippery and conceptual for me to master, and
- I associate “marketing” with “manipulation,” which runs counter to my principles. Maybe.
I say, “Maybe,” because my gut assertion was, “I don’t like to be manipulated. Nobody likes to be manipulated.” That feels like a simple truth, right? But with a little contemplation, I realize that it’s not as simple as all that. I don’t like being manipulated into doing things I don’t want to do, but I love being manipulated into feeling ways I want to feel.
I love the series Ted Lasso. If you’re not familiar with the show, you’ll just have to bear with me a bit. There’s no point in me trying to describe the characters or the plot; if you know, you know. I won’t be able to convey the manipulation second-hand. But pure, bald-faced emotional manipulation is exactly what it is, and I love it. I see the manipulation right before my eyes and I lower myself into it like a steamy bath.
I love the way the show makes me feel. If I could feel that way by merely willing myself to feel that way, I would do it all the time. But I can’t, so I need to submit myself to the manipulation.
That’s also why I play board games. You might know the same sensation through a well-worn Rankin/Bass VHS cassette tape. Or a ratty and yellowed Jane Austen novel. Or a Discord channel with a particular rogue’s gallery of characters and cut-ups who never let you down. Or the first ten minutes of Pixar’s “Up” played on repeat. Or, or, or… Whatever your favorite flavor of manipulation might be.
I might have an easier time accepting my role as a marketer if I frame it less as the reluctant coercion of random passersby and more as MaaS: Manipulation as a Service. “I got what makes you feel good, and I want you to feel good. Have some, if you please.”
Uh-huh. Whatever you need to tell yourself to sleep at night, bud.
— You
Yeah, I know. All of the above is sincere and earnest, but it still has the ring of a flimsy rationale to do the unsavory things I was going to do all along. But the absolute last thing I want is to give anybody the icks. To make them feel like they’ve been had, to make people feel like they’re getting half-truths from a huckster.
I want The Seahorse & The Hummingbird to be a celebration of game play!
But I also want… y’know… customers.