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Marketing surströmming

Some things are harder to swallow than the Swedish delicacy Surströmming.*

Like claims by faux thought leaders that marketing is different now than it was in the past.

Yeah, right.

“Always bear these facts in mind. People are hurried. The average person worth cultivating has too much to read. They skip three-fourths of the reading matter which they pay to get. They are not going to read your business talk unless you make it worth their while and let the headline show it.”

That quote is taken from Scientific Advertising by Claude C. Hopkins.

He’s talking about print.

But he could just as easily be describing the challenge marketers face in any media.

The thing is…

Hopkins published his book in 1923.

Seems like things are no different now than they were back then.

Times may have changed.

Media and technology may have changed.

But the people we market and sell to haven’t.

* According to the German food critic Wolfgang Fassbender “The biggest challenge when eating Surströmming is to vomit only after the first bite, as opposed to before.”

Video evidence of the ‘Surströmming Challenge’ on YouTube appears to support this claim.

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