The fact that a plain brown caterpillar can spin a cocoon and after a bit of a snooze, emerge as a multi coloured butterfly is pretty remarkable. Cramming hundreds of people into a tin can with wings and flying across the ocean at speeds of over 500 miles an hour is also quite remarkable. Alan Shepard thwacking a couple of golf balls across the surface of the moon is also classed as remarkable.
A bloggers talent agency in Australia, whilst long overdue, is not that remarkable.
There was a very loud and muddled conversation on twitter about The Remarkables Group, which wasn’t helped at all by whoever runs the @TheRemarksGroup twitter account only posting half a tweet at a time and responding defensively, if at all to questions by other Australian bloggers on twitter.
Other people joined the conversation and words like Storm and Furore were used, shouts of Tall Poppy Syndrome were heard and then the crowning glory of conversation stoppers was used, as Zoey Martin and I were described as Vocal Minorities with a galloping case of sour grapes.
*Sigh*
Nothing is ever easy when you are trying to get your point across in 140 characters but I thought this tweet of mine was pretty clear in its intent.
I don’t have a problem with the @TheRemarksGroup or with the Remarkables themselves. I have a problem with the promotion of Superiority
Indeed it is the promotion of superiority that I dislike very much, but I am very well aware that Brands and PR love it.
The first rule in Marketing is:- If you want to sell Product Z, you first have to make people want to buy Product Z. The easiest way to make people want to buy Product Z is To make Product Z exclusive, thus heightening its desirability by a zillion marketing points.
But there is also a very real and clear danger here in this small Australian fishbowl, that this premise of exclusivity will backfire on the remarks group and ultimately hurt those bloggers that are involved.
The tweets from @TheRemarksGroup linking to a blog post by Seth Godin titled, You will be judged or you will be ignored also act to further shut down conversation. The Remarkables Group make it clear that they are coming from a defensive position of the injured party being wilfully misunderstood by some disgruntled and jealous members of the Australian blogging community.
*Sigh*
The Remarkables Group represents five Australian bloggers, two of whom are internet friends of mine, I would like to state clearly and for the record that I wish all five remarkable bloggers the very best in their new venture. May your blogging careers be truly remarkable and may your spare rooms be forever full of interesting product.
A bloggers agent is a fantastic idea, but surely the job of an agent is to promote those bloggers in their stable to the best of their ability. Not to deliberately provoke some members of the Australian blogging community with the assertion that we the unremarkables have also been judged and somehow found to be lacking?
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