Choose a marketing-free zone

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Today, I want to flip things on their head a bit and advocate against marketing. I want to advocate for a marketing-free zone. In our efforts as marketers to experiment with as many different marketing channels as possible, we have a tendency to let marketing spread to everything.

Everything becomes marketing. We fill our social feeds with marketing. Our blogs and personal websites become marketing vehicles. Anyone who’s ever had a friend or relative in Amway or other network marketing knows the feeling of all-marketing-all-the-time.

The problem with always-on-everywhere marketing is that you have no outlet for relaxed creativity or personality. Everything has a production quota, an editorial calendar, a schedule, and an assignment.

The challenge I would pose to you is to choose which channels and places will be marketing-free zones. For me, these are places like Path, my personal Facebook profile, and Instagram.

I reserve these places for stuff that isn’t about work or marketing. They are free of schedule, free of editorial review, free of everything except whatever I feel like creating. Sometimes I’ll go weeks without posting a photo to Instagram. I’ll share stuff that’s important to me as a person on my Facebook profile but not relevant to marketing or business.

I would urge you to be just as clear in your own channels. What’s off-limits to you? Where will you post work-related stuff only by choice and quality rather than obligation? Where do you feel free (within the bounds of ethics, law, and good taste) to be yourself? If you don’t have a place set aside that’s a marketing-free zone, make one as soon as possible. Your intellectual freedom and creativity will thank you!

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