I just read an article on Bloomberg about the growing controversy surrounding Tether.
Apparently, Tether and the crypto exchange Bitfinex have the same CEO (this was news to me).
And there's a theory that Tether, which is a cryptocurrency that's supposed to be fully backed by US dollars, isn't actually backed by much of anything.
The theory also holds that Tether the company has been printing and selling Tether the crypto on Bitfinex (owned by the same people) in exchange for Bitcoin, pumping up the value of Bitcoin.
Is it true?
I don't know.
But in the free-to-print world of cryptocurrencies, it's certainly possible.
This reminded me of something related in the marketing world.
It also has to do something that's free to print.
Crappy blogs.
Irrelevant landing pages.
Dull emails that nobody wants to read.
All of this stuff can exist on the Internet, because it's free to print and publish there, even though it's ineffective in driving sales and conversions.
It's a very different world from the way direct marketing started out, when people had to pay good money to run an ad in a newspaper, or pay for a real stamp and a real envelope for each direct mail piece sent.
That discipline of paying to market eliminated a lot of bad ideas, and distilled a lot of insight into what marketing works and what doesn't.
Unfortunatley, much of that has been lots on the Internet today.
And today, it's easy to look around and decide that this bad marketing must be working, simply because there's so much of it around.
Well, maybe this is phantom marketing success, just like phantom Bitcoin demand.
Now, I can't help you determine whether you should invest your real dollars in Tether or Bitcoin.
But I can tell you about real marketing practices that have been proven outside the free-to-publish marketing arena. If you need copywriting or marketing help using these kinds of proven techniques, you can reach me at:
John Bejakovic