There’s more to it than just carrying a message…

This is a post about Pheidippides or, more accurately, what he got up to one afternoon in 490BC.

It was the day of the Greek victory over the Persians at The Battle of Marathon, and since status updates were a fair way off, ole Phei’ was charged with relaying news of the win to Athens. Unfortunately, Athens was 25 miles away, and that meant a brisk jog. On arriving in Athens, Pheidippides managed to utter just three words - ‘We have won’ - before dropping the floor, where he died of exhaustion. It seems the 150 mile jaunt he’d had to Sparta just the day before didn’t help his cause.

Now, what does this tale of Athenian expiration have to do with us? Well, Pheidippides was carrying a message. Indeed he carried that message and he delivered that message. But then he died. After that, he didn’t carry any more messages. Nor did he have time to pass on further information, or discuss the implications of the message. That’s a lot of effort for three words.

What Pheidippides did was fulfil the basic function of carrying a message, and no more. Two and a half thousand years later, not everyone’s progressed much further…

The technological revolution has dropped the cost of mass communication significantly. Now anyone with access to a computer can begin pumping their own message into the world without so much as a need to move a mouse 25 centimetres, let alone 25 miles. Suddenly we’re being bombarded with messages, which makes upping the quality of what you say (and how you say it) important if you want people to take notice of it.

All too often I still see platforms, fan pages, blogs and websites created for one purpose only: to carry a marketing message.

“We want to let people know about our new range of waterproof socks” yells Marketing Manager A. “Why don’t we build a microsite based around them and let people learn about them there?!” hollers back Marketing Guru X. “And what do we do with the site after the campaign finishes?” muses Marketing Manager B. “Meh” grunts Marketing Guru X…

It’s strange thinking.

With such a wealth of platforms already out there online, it makes more sense to position a message somewhere people are already talking. That way, they can take the message and keep running with it, talking about it, shaping it and discussing it for as long as they want. Even better, if it turns out you have another message that you want to pass on, you can revisit - envelope in hand - and with minimal fuss, keep the conversation going.

I’ve long thought of it this way: would you found a newspaper just to pubish one story?

You wouldn’t.

It shouldn’t be any different in the online world, just because you can.

The richest conversation and the most trustworthy messages come from the places we know and love. If they’re already out there why not make use of them?

Brought into the world on Monday, October 26th, 2009 and filed under Uncategorized.