Plato 1: “The marketing terms”

Applying philosophy practices to the day-to-day marketing efforts may seem forced. Nevertheless, after spending many days reading Plato’s main peices, and listening to a few experts giving their thoughts on his work – I feel like there are some real values here to apply to every marketer’s actions.

Here are some anecdotes about Plato’s life:

• Plato is the first Philosopher that we can actually read what he wrote.
• He was the student of Socrates (most we know about this fella is because of Plato).
• The founder and CEO of the “Academy” in Athens.
• Probably what let to Plato’s writing was Socrates’ death when he was 31 (Plato, not Socrates).
• 35 Dialogs and 13 letters is what we have left from Plato’s work, as far as experts can tell.

It is traditional to divide Plato’s work into 3 periods; Early, middle & late – not an attractive naming but an effective one. I want to discuss some of the Early phase insights. In the early period dialogs like Apology, Crito, Laches & more, Plato focuses on moral questions. 

So what happened on these dialogs? Socrates allegedly walks into a conversation with someone that is sure he knows the meaning of a basic and well-known term like “courage” or “bravery”. Then, Socrates starts a Socratic questioning – asking a series of questions that prove that this person doesn’t really know what he’s talking about. 

I think we can take that to the marketing life pretty easily. Often – and I’ll be my own critic here – I think I know well what are the terms we are using like “ROI”, “Engagement rate”, “Best practice” and so on, but sometimes I don’t. Let’s take “best practices” AKA “some article I found online that says that this is the right way to do things”, and let’s start asking ourselves some questions:

1. Is this method right for my business?
2. Is it taken from a reliable source?
3. When was the “best practice” last updated?
4. Why is it the best practice?
5. Who is gaining from me using it? Me or Google/Facebook?

Like Plato & Socrates, I don’t want to end this piece with a clear conclusion. But I can’t help myself. Try to question your Marketing actions and your used terms as often as you can. It may not give you a clear answer, but it will get you closer to the truth.

On the next blog you’ll read a Socratic questioning with me & my unwanted brain child (yes, I said it).

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