A phone call at work inviting me to attend an all-day "Digital Marketing Strategy" seminar. I explained that my digital marketing strategy is the same as my analog marketing strategy: would the seminar address digi-anal issues for those of us who are so inclined?
A reasonable question considering the sum being charged to doze off in the basement of a Marriot while "industry leaders" regurgitated cliches and platitudes at a podium for eight hours.
But my query was met with awkward silence as the agent on the phone audibly searched for an appropriate bullet point from the seminar promotional brochure with which to restart their sales pitch, eventually settling upon reading potted biographies of the key speakers, none of whom boasted any qualifications or experience valued by me.
When the agent concluded this recitation of profoundly uninteresting information, I pointed out how ironic it was that such an ancient instrument as the telephone was being used to sell a seminar about digital marketing. Could it be, by any chance, because all the spam emails the seminar's organizers previously bombarded me with had all been simply and swiftly deleted?
No doubt it could. Which is why my digital marketing strategy is the same as my analog marketing strategy. Only connect, as E. M. Forster advised, even if you need to use two plastic cups attached to each other by a length of old string.
