Seems I’m rant­ing a lot these days, and a lit­tle more opin­ion­ated than the norm. Per­haps it’s my bro­ken back, which is killing me, that’s mak­ing me more sen­si­tive or irri­ta­ble. I don’t know.

But some­thing some­one recently said in my copy­writ­ers forum irri­tated me. And it’s not what this per­son said specif­i­cally, but the mind­set behind it that’s both­er­ing me.

In a thread about an Inter­net mar­keter who was recently arrested (yes, it had some­thing to do with forced con­ti­nu­ity, but it had more to do with refus­ing refunds and avoid­ing cus­tomers than it had to do with forced con­ti­nu­ity itself), one mem­ber said:

“There is NO such thing as an hon­est busi­ness man. (…) Ask any accountant.”

Now, I have no clue as to why this per­son said this. And my opin­ion here is not about this per­son specif­i­cally. Again, it’s about the think­ing process that some peo­ple have when they make such assertions.

Per­son­ally, I believe this view of busi­ness peo­ple is skewed, off, and wrong. It’s destruc­tive, too.

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Many copy­writ­ers often talk about tar­get­ing a niche… get­ting to know them so you talk their lan­guage and describe your solu­tion for them as though you were one of them.

I’d like to take a con­trar­ian view.

I think it’s silly to worry about tar­get­ing a “niche.”

I pro­pose that all peo­ple are the same at their core and if you are actu­ally work­ing a true mar­ket… tar­get­ing is as silly as pre­tend­ing that some peo­ple don’t eat or sleep or have sex or breathe.

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A recently under­stood seg­ment of mar­ket­ing is the immense power behind the prod­uct cat­e­gory. Often, many busi­nesses build their entire mar­ket­ing strat­egy around a par­tic­u­lar brand and its bet­ter qual­i­ties within a cur­rently known prod­uct cat­e­gory, only to have it all go down the drain in the end.

Remem­ber the “New Coke”? In the 80’s, Pepsi con­ducted taste tests called “The Pepsi Chal­lenge.” Coke, on the side­lines, also heard from their own research that a newer, bet­ter tast­ing brand would beat Pepsi.

Only 77 days later, accord­ing to Coke’s for­mer mar­ket­ing vice-​​president Ser­gio Zyman in his book “The End of Mar­ket­ing As We Know It,” not only were they forced to rein­tro­duce the older ver­sion as “Clas­sic Coke” but they also had to even­tu­ally wipe the New Coke out. Bet­ter is not always bet­ter.

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What­ever may be said in praise of poverty, the fact remains that it is not pos­si­ble to live a really com­plete or suc­cess­ful life unless one is rich. No one can rise to his great­est pos­si­ble height in tal­ent or soul devel­op­ment unless he has plenty of money, for to unfold the soul and to develop tal­ent he must have many things to use, and he can­not have these things unless he has money to buy them with.

A per­son devel­ops in mind, soul, and body by mak­ing use of things, and soci­ety is so orga­nized that man must have money in order to become the pos­ses­sor of things. There­fore, the basis of all advance­ment must be the sci­ence of get­ting rich.

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