Forever Geek!

This week i was talking to a friend and colleague about how our business is a 'young man's game' and that, as specialists we are lucky to be in a good place as the age thing doesn't really come into play. However surely the more i do this the more i am likely to get elevated to 'Guru' status in marketing effectiveness

Also we were talking to a potential client this week when i was introduced as 'Our Marketing Geek' - you know that, is something i can live with!

If I was introduced as the 'Guru' i can't call our guys in Social and ask them how fans are measured on facebook...I'm the guru, I can't let people know that I may need to be brought up to speed on the latest in marketing effectiveness. I must know everything. On the other hand, if I'm a geek, I can just say "Cool. Show me how you do that! What else do you know?"

In a business world that is transforming at such an incredible pace, where technologies are created almost daily, new ideas and new opportunities present themselves equally as fast. Just how long can any guru bang on about, say, market-mix modeling before we notice they're fossilised and we stop listening to their pointless babble? You don't have that problem with geeks, because geeks are always focused on learning-well, at least as much as they like to show off what they've learned-and are always interested in getting together with other geeks to learn. This way everyone wins.

So its not about trashing the tried and tested, its about moulding what we have learnt and making it better with new data, ideas and approaches. That means talking to people, having an enquiring mind and a high speed internet connection. That is being a geek...and the geek with inherit the earth!