Classical Music Convinces ISIS Fighters To Surrender

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The 11/17/2016 edition of the Washington Post published an article by Caitlin Dewey that reports on the influence of fake news stories on the recent presidential election. It’s a sobering read but well worth your time, and although there’s more than enough to wade through via the political ramifications, it got me thinking that perhaps we are even further behind the marketing curve than we like to think.

As insane as it sounds, pumping out a bunch of fake news and duping people into distributing it for you across social media appears to be the new normal.

“My sites were picked up by Trump supporters all the time. I think Trump is in the White House because of me. His followers don’t fact-check anything — they’ll post everything, believe anything. His campaign manager posted my story about a protester getting paid $3,500 as fact. Like, I made that up. I posted a fake ad on Craigslist.

[…]

Just ’cause his supporters were under the belief that people were getting paid to protest at their rallies, and that’s just insane. I’ve gone to Trump protests — trust me, no one needs to get paid to protest Trump. I just wanted to make fun of that insane belief, but it took off. They actually believed it.

If you can’t beat ’em…

So why not start some outlets and begin pumping out the same sort of nonsense, hence today’s title.

Of course it’s bull hockey but who cares, right? Just get ’em the door. If it helps, convince yourself it’s just a contemporary, albeit perverse, take on Lieutenant Kijé.

It’s no secret that the field as a whole has been playing catch up once it acknowledged the old-school “great art” marketing approach was no longer in its best interests. Although it’s headed in a much better direction, it’s still playing catch-up.

My apologies for such a dark tone for today’s post and no, I certainly don’t advocate this approach but these sorts of discoveries can make one wonder just how out of touch our marketing efforts are.