A True Tale of Marketing Malpractice, Corporate Courage, and One Very Confused New Hire
By Timmy T. Tater | Chief Spud and Editor, The Sweet Potato
There I was, a humble ad salesman — a sweet potato, to be precise, which in this industry makes me either perfectly branded or deeply conflicted — walking into a local business like I’ve done roughly ten thousand times before. Armed with my proposal, my charm, and the quiet confidence to know exactly what a business needs to thrive, I was ready to do the good work of connecting a solid company to its customers.
What I was not ready for was-The New Guy, Marketing Manager.
Now, when I say “marketing manager,” I use the term the way politicians use the word “investment” — loosely, generously, and with absolutely no accountability. This individual had apparently been handed the keys to the marketing kingdom with all the preparation of someone who once clicked “boost post” on a Facebook birthday announcement and called it a campaign.
He greeted me with the energy of a man defusing a bomb he didn’t know existed.
“We’re cutting back,” he said, which is business-speak for “I have no idea what I’m doing, and if I spend zero dollars, nobody can blame me for spending it wrong.”
Then came the corporate kiss-off — that beautiful, time-honored institution known as The Phantom Proposal Request. You know the one. “Go ahead and send over a proposal. I’ll look it over and get back to you.”
Reader, he did not get back to me.
Now, a lesser potato might have stewed — and we sweet potatoes have a complicated enough relationship with that particular fate already. But not Timmy T. Honestly? I nearly forgot about the whole thing — until the universe, in its infinite and slightly inconvenient wisdom, put that very business directly on my daily route.
Oh right, I thought, like remembering you left something running back at the office. That guy.
So I called. Like a professional. Like a potato who has been in this business long enough to know that silence is not a marketing strategy. And the answer I received was delivered with the grammatical confidence of someone who had absolutely made up their mind:
“We ain’t doing no advertising this year.”
Now, I want to pause here and appreciate this sentence — not for its clarity, because grammatically it actually means they are doing advertising — but for its spirit. Its boldness. Its sheer, breathtaking audacity. This was a business that has historically advertised. Successfully. Profitably. And now, under the stewardship of Captain No-Budget, they were going to ride the algorithm into the sunset and hope for the best.
Free social media. The battle cry of the modern marketing amateur.
Why pay for reach, they reason, when I can post a photo with three hashtags and watch the customers roll in?
Spoiler: The customers do not roll in.
Look, I hate to be the sweet potato that tells you this. I really do. It pains me right down to my deepest root. But the algorithm is not your friend. It is not your publicist. It is not a golden retriever that will loyally fetch you new customers if you just scratch it behind the ears often enough. It is a machine designed to show people content they already like, made by accounts they already follow, boosted by money they have already spent. Your organic post about a new product or a seasonal special is being seen by your own employees, your mom, and a bot in Eastern Europe.
Organic. Funny word for a potato to use. But even I know you can’t grow a business on organic alone — no matter what industry you’re in.
But here’s the beauty of this whole story — the poetry of it, really.
Somewhere down the road, probably around Q3 when the numbers look like a sweet potato that’s been forgotten in the field since last winter, a boss is going to pull our dear marketing manager into a very uncomfortable meeting. There will be spreadsheets. There will be a long, heavy silence. And then, with the gravity of a person who just found the receipt for a decision they didn’t make, the boss will lean across the table and say:
“So…what exactly is it that you do here?”
And thus the circle of business life will complete itself.
A new marketing manager will emerge — one who understands that a marketing mix is not a buzzword to nod at in a staff meeting and promptly ignore. One who knows that paid advertising, social media, community presence, and yes, even a humble ad package from a sweet potato named Timmy T., all work together like a well-oiled machine.
You can’t run a thriving operation on hashtags and good intentions.
So let this be a cautionary tale, dear business owners — whatever business you happen to be in. Guard your marketing budget the way you guard your best contracts and your best clients. Hire people who know the difference between a strategy and a shrug. Understand that free reach is not real reach, that social media alone is not a marketing plan, and that a proper marketing mix — print, digital, broadcast, community — is the difference between a business that grows and one that quietly fades into irrelevance.
Please also heed this dire warning-The Social Medium is not for the faint of heart. You probably already realized that…but, when your feed is filled with this “friend” using ALL CAPS to blow someone up and that “friend” is telling some grape fruit, juicy fruit, coconut telegraph news, all the while another “friend” is showing off their new look after a few weeks at the gym, the last thing on anyone’s mind is “hey, I need to buy that (whatever).”
So, when a friendly, knowledgeable, and admittedly starchy ad professional comes walking through your door with a proposal in hand…
Maybe don’t ghost him.
He drives by every single day.
He will notice.
And Taters tell true tales.
