dead marcom

traditional marketing communications is over, but no one told the C-suite

We ended the previous post: “This kind of content [traditional, hot-air marcom] is known as company-first instead of customer-first marcom, which is the essential point of all B2B information: This is how you’re going to make more money or save more money by working with us.”

This failure to put the customer first is the failure of nearly all marcom with wasted time and money decade after decade. Such a simple concept and seemingly so difficult to practice: Create an emotional attachment to your brand by talking about how you’re going to solve the customer problem and make or save more money not how great your stuff is.

Don’t you want to know what a company can do you for you? I know I do. Your potential customers are no different. Tell them. In value propositions. In real words. The words you speak every day. Not the corporate voice and tone that can be transferred from one company to the next to the next to the next…

Regardless of what the C-suite thinks, the internet and technology have killed traditional, hot-air marcom, this transferrable voice and tone in which so many businesses sound the same. Take one brand off. Slap another on. Just like in the old days. Nothing changes except the product, service, or technology name.

This company-first style with its content complexity—an engineer’s way of speaking—became the wrong way to communicate when the first web page appeared on the internet in 1991. And, when the internet morphed onto smartphones and tablets and laptops that support text messaging, social media, video, and streaming media with connectivity anytime, anywhere? Our communication habits rewired. Faster. Shorter. Direct. How we communicate changed forever. No more pretense. Being human as we are. Traditional, hot-air marcom died. Hot-air marcom is dead.

But, company after company, continues to dress up the corpse as though we’re living in a pre-digital era because so many teams and, by default, the C-suite still think that an engineer’s content complexity equals intelligence. Content complexity no more equals intelligence than a scarecrow equals life unless you’re on a dreamy stroll to the land of Oz.

We can wake up from the content complexity dream and declare that the ghost of dead marcom—which stalks corporate halls 5 days a week, 52 weeks a year—will no longer prey on our fear of sounding human. Likewise for its ghost brothers, features and benefits.

The world won’t end if you sound human. You’ll be trusted because you’re real. And, you’ll get more customers.

Copyright © 2025 Bruce Goldfaden and LSV Communications LLC. All rights reserved.