We Are Media Makers
If you're reading this, odds are you're a media maker.
Today’s essay is a behind-the-scenes look at how I’m thinking about marketing and our relationship to it. The first part is available to everyone, and the second is for premium subscribers only. Not already a premium subscriber? Upgrade to read the entire piece, support my work, and get access to my next live workshop: Remarkable Marketing Basics.
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…we've all experienced what happens when a poor choice of words leads to the wrong outcome. Whether we're confused by one word or the entire message, the anxiety that comes from misunderstanding someone else's language is incredibly frustrating.
— Abby Covert, How to Make Sense of Any Mess
Am I a “marketer?”
Very early in my self-employment, I was invited to join a networking event as a mentor at my alma mater. I remember introducing myself to another alumnus—or rather, I remember what he said to me once I'm sure I bungled my introduction. He replied, "Oh, so you're a marketer."
That response scrambled my brain a bit. Yes, I do marketing. But I'm not "a marketer." The title he'd defined me as didn't sound right to me. It wasn't wrong, but it wasn't right either.
That experience had to have been in 2011 or 2012. It was before terms like "influencer" or "creator" became common. Even "blogger" or "coach" wasn't super mainstream. The best term that guy had for me then was marketer.
It's worth noting that marketer didn't carry many positive connotations. Typically, you don't call someone who works in the marketing department of a company "a marketer." They are, but that's different from what the term means. I think—and this is speculation—he meant "direct response marketer." At that time, a direct response marketer would be someone who placed an ad in the back of a magazine or sent unsolicited mail to generate sales of a product of dubious value—often a pre-digital information product.
I honestly couldn't tell you if this guy was intentionally insulting me to my face or if marketer was, to him, a completely value-neutral term. For my sanity, I've chosen to assume it was the latter. All I knew then was that the term marketer made me uncomfortable—like an ill-fitting underwire bra.
Identity without terminology
It's an odd feeling to use words to describe yourself that others don't know what to do with. And I've tried out a slew of those words in the last 15 years: blogger, coach, strategist, educator, trainer, small business owner, entrepreneur, founder, leader, etc. Today, I mainly refer to myself as a writer, podcaster, and producer. Thankfully, those words are pretty recognizable across a wide swath of people.
But this question of what to call myself—and, by extension, what to call you—has been equal parts frustrating and fascinating. The question has been part of my own self-employment (another word!) since the jump. It's created plenty of confusion when talking about who my audience is or who an offer is for. But today, I find myself confronted by new lexical challenges.
Not so much on the what to call myself front. I'm pleased to be a writer, podcaster, and producer right now.
The lexical challenges are on the what to call you front. Because what I call you matters—a lot.
What I call you changes how you relate to my work, whether or not you think I'm talking to you or about you, whether you perceive yourself as included or excluded. When I talk about rethinking work, whose work am I rethinking? Which workers am I speaking to or about? What do I even mean by work?
Defining terms
On one of our first dates, my husband paused a conversation to "define terms." It was like music to my hyper-literal ears. Whenever we discuss big, potentially controversial, or otherwise fraught topics, we always pause to define terms. After all, we can only have a productive conversation if we know what we're discussing.
When we define terms, we’re not merely agreeing on a definition. We’re negotiating how we’re using words and what they mean in the particular context of the discussion. When I say "small business owner," what do I mean? When I say "feminist," what do I mean? Those terms have definitions, but how we use them varies across time, place, and relationship. They mean different things depending on context.
When it comes back to the questions of what to call myself and what to call you, I wrestle with a meaning and context that seems to lack an appropriate term. Instead of defining terms, I need to do the opposite—to "invent" terms defined by the evident meaning and context of this moment.
What term can I use to signify the meaning and context I'm trying to talk about? And how does that term connect to existing meanings and contexts? It doesn't matter if I find a "good" term for a particular meaning and context if others connect that term to a different meaning and context.
The names we give for things—especially ourselves—are more than a simple choice of words. They change our relationships to ourselves, to others, and to systems of power. Our identifying terms shape what we know and how we know it, what we have access to and how we access it.
Okay, that's very abstract. Here's the current naming challenge I'm wrestling with.