The line from T. S. Eliot’s 1917 masterpiece “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” reached meme status in the literary community long before the word “meme” came into common parlance. Unfortunately it has not yet reached many in the marketing community.

Prufrock is a window into the desolate worldview that the fearful create for themselves. The verse containing the line above sums up the whole of the poem rather nicely:

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.

I’ll spare you further flashbacks of your high school English courses, except to remind you of the crucial point, the point at which you stand up and scream in indignation:

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair—	40
[They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”]
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin—
[They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”]
Do I dare	45
Disturb the universe?

“Yes!” you scream. “Dare to disturb the universe! Eat a peach! Part your hair however the hell you want! Just go do something!”

And then you realize you’re in the middle of the library screaming at a character whose author has been dead for several decades.

The point, you realize as a beefy security guard accompanies you to the nearest exit, is that despite Mr. Prufrock’s assertions to the contrary, there is no time — in life or in business — to second-guess your impulses.

We have a name for people who chronically second-guess themselves. We call them cowards.

I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,	85
And in short, I was afraid.

Now, cowards have their place. If you want to keep your money safe, for example, you’d prefer a cowardly banker. A cowardly banker won’t invest in nascent industries or in volatile third world countries. A cowardly banker will invest your money in boring, familiar markets and will give you a modest but predictable return.

Cowards have no place in the marketing world.

Of all the professions in all the world, marketing is perhaps the least tolerant of safety. Safe marketers do not make their message or their brand stand out. This failure results in a lack of visibility for the brand, a lack of eyeballs for the message, and a lack of effectiveness in your marketing strategy.

My good friends over at Captains of Industry put it another way. “Safe (i.e. boring) marketing becomes invisible,” they say, “which is a total waste of money. To attain success, make your marketing bold so it stands out in a crowd and on 
strategy so it achieves results.”

I’ll go even one step further: If you’re not taking risks as a marketer, you  have no business calling yourself a marketer.

HubSpot took a gigantic risk launching an Alternate Reality Game, and as a marketing tactic it failed miserably and upset a lot of their customers.

But did HubSpot sit around and wonder, “Well gee, I dunno if we should do this. It’s kind of out there”? No, they didn’t. They just launched the game and dealt with the fallout.

“But it failed,” you say. “HubSpot didn’t get any leads or press from the game. It was a waste of resources. How could you advocate for that kind of marketing?”

How? Because it’s worlds better than the alternative.

If marketers played with Prufrock’s playbook, imagine what the state of marketing would be. We’d be stuck with boring ads-by-committee, publishing only those ads that were the most PC and the least creative. A good marketer would be one with an encyclopedic knowledge of only the safest and most benign methods of advertising. Print. Outdoor. Television. Direct mail. Anything that interrupts a creative channel is fine, but don’t even think about creating your own channel. It’s much too risky.

Sound ridiculous? It is. Prufrock himself agrees:

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord…
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool.

So if I may channel Seth Godin for a minute, I have a very simple question:

Who are you?

Image credit: Captains of Industry