A publication by Josh van Tongeren
Marketing is easy
in hindsight.
Thoughtful writing, useful tools and a healthy suspicion of anyone who claims to have cracked marketing.
Currently getting its act together. A familiar marketing exercise.
Why “mediocre”?About the name
“Mediocre” keeps
the ego in check.
Nobody wants to be a mediocre marketer. Neither do I.
We’re trying to understand people, not touchpoints. We’re making decisions with incomplete information and a sea of incoherent data, inside businesses with competing priorities, limited budgets and an endless list of urgent demands.
Sometimes a campaign works for exactly the reason we thought it would. Sometimes it works and, after the celebratory drinks, we admit we’re not entirely sure why. Sometimes good thinking produces a bad result. Sometimes bad thinking gets lucky. It’s messy.
Reputations can change just as quickly. Brilliant one day. Out of touch the next. The Mediocre Marketer is a reminder to be humble about how much we know, while still pursuing excellent marketing.
Ambitious about the work. A little less precious about ourselves.
Whether marketing is your job or just one of the many hats you wear, you’re welcome here.
In the works
Things worth thinking about
Stories, observations and the occasional disagreement about marketing.
What happened, what might explain it, what we don’t know and what would be interesting to explore next. The victory lap can wait.
Tools that know their place
Calculators and practical tools for interrogating budgets, assumptions and marketing decisions.
They’ll do the arithmetic. They may even be useful. They will try very hard not to mistake either of those things for wisdom.
Things worth testing
Ideas, questions and experiments you can take back to actual marketing.
Because eventually someone has to stop discussing the funnel and make something.
How we’ll approach it
No certainty pills.
Marketing involves people, competitors, budgets, timing, creativity, organisations and an impressive quantity of data that doesn’t always agree with itself.
So this site won’t promise to reveal the seven immutable laws of growth.
We’ll take evidence seriously. We’ll use models where they’re useful. We’ll question assumptions. We’ll test things. And when the appropriate answer is “it depends”, we’ll try to explain what it depends on.
That seems more useful.
Coming soon
Still getting
its act together.
I’m building the first tools and working on the first articles now. Come back when the curtain’s up.
There’s no Wizard of Oz behind it. Just a marketer juggling competing ambitions and delivering what he can.