Finally getting a chance to read Joseph Jaffe’s Join the Conversation: How to Engage Marketing-Weary Consumers with the Power of Community, Dialogue, and Partnership. It got buried in a stack of stuff during the Great Living Room Baseboard Debacle and only re-emerged this weekend following the Great Excavation Of The Spare Room.
I’m not in the marketing game and didn’t learn what an “affiliate” was until Twitter, but I’m thinking that there may be lessons for educators in here somewhere. I caught the tail end of a CSPAN broadcast the other day where Science Professor SoandSo was talking about how badly academia has failed to “market” the value and meaning of scientific research and education as a whole. When surveys consistently show that some unbelievable percentage of Americans don’t understand that evolution happens and that the natural selection part is the _theory_, you have to agree with Science Professor SoandSo. We’re doing something wrong, clearly!
I met jaffejuice through Twitter ages ago, it seems, and took him up on his offer of a free copy in exchange for an honest review, so it’s about time I got to it. Will let you know how it goes and hopefully I’ll find some good insights that might be of use to the educational community.
What if we don’t think of people as consumers or targets?