If you Teach a Man to Fish: Why “fishing where the fish are” is not enough

For as long as I’ve been doing this, people have been telling me that the surest path to marketing success was to always be “fishing where the fish are.” That is, put your message where the people you want to reach, are.

And that makes sense, right? If you’re talking to motorcycle riders, advertise where motorcycle riders are. If you’re talking to Moms, put your message where Moms are. And if you’re talking to Moms who ride motorcycles, well, you get the idea.

And this advice has served advertisers and their agencies for centuries. I would bet that if you dug deep enough into Pompeii’s ashes you would find an ancient Roman vellum purporting delivering this aphorism in some Latinate version of corkscrew advertising-ese.

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