The Gurteen perspective: Cut the hype

By David Gurteen

A while back I received an e-mail from the secretary of a well-known UK management consultant, who asked if I would consider adding the consultant to the set of people profiles I have on my website.
My first reaction was to say 'No'. People qualify for inclusion on my website for one or two reasons. They are famous historical individuals who have influenced me – for example, Socrates. Or, contemporary thinkers, such asTom Peters. Then, there are people with whom I have worked, who I know and respect – for example, Chris Collison.
I was about to send the reply when it occurred to me that maybe I was being a bit hasty – I did know of this man but had not visited his website or read any of his books – maybe he was good and I should check him out. So I did.
I went to his website but was hugely disappointed. It was what I call a ‘marketing hype’ website – well actually, I call such sites something far ruder. The website contained nothing of value. All it did was attempt to tell me how wonderful he was. I am sure you know what I'm talking about – accolades, lists of books and papers published, powerful, flowing marketing prose that says nothing. Not even the mention of his books was of value – no free chapters, just repeats of the marketing hype from the fly cover. And, of course, no blog!
And so I went back to my e-mail and replied to her – telling her the type of people I profiled as I described above and that I had visited his website but it told me absolutely nothing about him. She replied to say that he had a newsletter that I could sign up to on his website and that I should go take a look at that to learn more about him.
Thinking I had missed it – I returned – only to find a sign-up box in a page column that asked for my e-mail address if I wished to receive a newsletter. There was nothing about the newsletter – no description of content, frequency of publication or back copies. To me it seemed just a way to harvest e-mail addresses. I was not impressed.
So I replied to his secretary again asking her where I might find the back copies so I could see the content and quality of his work before subscribing and also that I would rather receive the newsletter as an RSS feed and could she give me the URL. I knew exactly what I was asking. I was asking the impossible. The newsletters were not online and there was no RSS feed. I doubt if she even knew what an RSS feed was and of course I received the reply I expected – that is, no reply at all.
Why people create such websites, I do not know. My advice to two consultants running similar, marketing-hype websites was to start a blog instead but I know they won’t. They just don’t get it: today to demonstrate your ability, you have to give people something of value – not hot air!

David Gurteen can be contacted at david.gurteen@gurteen.com or www.gurteen.com