The problem with professional

I just read Clay Shirky’s book – Here Comes Everybody. In it he makes a great point that being ‘professional’ brings with it an inherent bias and unwillingness to see change.

He quotes the example of professional journalists missing the racist comments by former leader of the House Trent Lott, which eventually led to his resignation. For these journalists, it didn’t fit within their existing structures and concepts of ‘newsworthiness’.

Instead it was ‘amateur’ bloggers who picked up on the comment and sparked furious debate about what he’d said, and then an investigation into what he’d said in the past.

I couldn’t help but think about this in the context of marketing and brand building. For years marketers and their agencies have defined themselves as ‘communications professionals’ and yet the mechanics of communications, much like the mechanics of journalism, are changing radically and permanently.

If we lock ourselves into the idea of being in a communications profession, I think we risk massively underestimating both the pace and nature of change in the world around us.

In a world where image no longer defines reality, but instead reality is increasingly driving image, anyone thinking of themselves simply as a communications professional risks being left behind.

Instead, I think we need to open our minds and begin thinking of ourselves as brand amateurs, where brand is a system of mechanisms – experience, innovation, culture, communication, conversation, creativity etc.

Rather than being locked into a single mechanical construct, this frees us to focus more on pursuing a business vision – through whichever means is most important, and irrespective of whether it is about communication or not.

(Paul Worthington)