A trend I am seeing from marketing agencies, production companies, filmmakers is that everyone claims to be an expert in the field of __________ (fill in the blank).
As an owner of a production company, I notice these things and it causes quite a bit of bafflement. The questions run through my head: “does everyone know something that I don’t?” “how did they learn that?” ” how come it is working for them?”
When I start to dig deeper into these blog posts and videos I began to see something that starts raising some red flags. It greatly concerns me due to two major reasons 1) Are there people being scammed by “experts” who don’t really know what they are talking about? 2) Do these people actually believe they are experts or are they just regurgitating information someone else told them?
I really hope that neither are the case because I would not want any client of mine to get caught in a trap of paying an uninformed “expert” for expert advice. I hope no one wishes that on their clients.
So the question is, “are they actually experts?”. Honestly, I can’t say, maybe they are, but it sure smells a bit fishy when I read or watch something that sounds like a repeat of what someone else said. Even more fishy is when the “expert” doesn’t have any proof of it working. It also makes me wonder if their only proof is in selling their information about how to sell information.
I’ll be the first to say that I am not an expert marketer. It’s probably why a bootstrapped media company like Stage Ham Entertainment is reading so many of these articles. What steps do we need to follow to land clients? How to do outbound marketing, in bound marketing, convert leads, etc.
A company needs to have a specialty or expert status in something or they will be the cheapest option available and the quality of work they do will be proof of that price point.
For Stage Ham Entertainment our expertise is in story, creating that engaging bond between viewer and the message, because it is all about story…and you begin to feel like you’ve been sucked into the trap of another self proclaimed expert pushing another buzz word because it is the “in thing.”
Wrong.
And here is why.
Story is not a buzzword. This is something that has been frustrating me for a number of years. Having worked as an editor and “storyteller” for advertising/marketing companies creating their videos, I have seen the word being tossed around like free samples in Costco on a Saturday. It has become something of zero substance and little nutritional value yet people are pushing it on you at the end of every aisle like it’s the best thing since sliced bread and you must have it to succeed.
I call B.S.
Story has been around since cave drawings, sharing conquests and achievements. It is not a new trend that we should be following, it is basically how we communicate daily and across worlds.
Story is a much bigger topic to discuss and why I spent the following 10+ years after my first feature film studying story because I knew it was one of the most important things to know if starting a company that tells stories.
Luckily, you can read about the follow up to this topic in my post Story Is Not a Buzzword.
