Style Me Pretty Goes Dark

Just when it seems are moving along to move along, the wedding industry gets huge news that  Style Me Pretty is going dark in a few weeks.  AOL (now OATH) has announced that they will not be archiving the site but will instead be shutting down.

Of course, there are marketing and SEO concerns from those creative businesses who have been featured and/or are part of SMP’s Little Black Book.  However, the real fallout is the feeling that the days of the blog, even social media in general, is dying as an effective marketing tool for wedding professionals.  This thought has ripples for all creative business industries and I am not one to say whether the idea that current marketing tools are becoming irrelevant or not.  I leave that to those who know better about these tools.

My focus is two-fold — the power of the validator and what authenticity really means.

SMP was built on Abby’s vision and Tait’s tech chops.  Abby had a point of view on what she thought was “pretty” and we could all see it from a mile away.  Tait was (and is) unbelievable at getting Abby’s vision out across the internet.  Like every great validator, if Abby loved your work, you, the creative business owner, reaped the rewards of the endorsement.  Fold in Little Black Book and you have a mechanism for great marketing potential.  Whether anyone cares to admit it or not, the value of SMP was derived from Abby saying you were great and brides believing her.  When Abby and Tait left last year, OATH did not work hard enough to capture the spirit of Abby’s voice or allow another voice to emerge.  The business turned into straight advertising play and faded as a result.  The question then is: Is the day of the validator, the power blogger, the print media tastemaker, gone?  Or is SMP’s closing just a statement that niche is not meant to scale?

And if any of it is true, then what is your responsibility as a creative business owner today?  Who will be our validators?  Will there be a validator?  If there is not, how will you be found?  Most important, when does using a validator become counter-productive?

Take only half a second to look at trend setters and the power of influencers on any particular industry (Goop?!?) and you will know that validators are not going anywhere.  What is going away is advertising aggregators based on general (or overly generic, broad, boring (?)) content.  Clients want to see themselves in the validator and they want to trust the motives of the validator.  Abby likes the work of particular vendor just because she does, not because (or not only because) they pay her money.  Dilute Abby’s point of view and the whole thing crumbles.

All of which brings me to empathy, taking from Seth Godin “people like us do things like this”.  SMP let you cheat.  They did the work of saying who you were to those who were looking for people like you.  That day is gone until the next Abby that comes along that is relevant, a day which may never come.  So, in the meantime, you have to do the work of authenticity, especially if you have earned the right to have your own voice.  You have to understand who you are talking to and, even more importantly, to who you are not.  You have to do the work of building community drip by drip by drip.  You have to show up with consistency and truth to the outrageous promises you are making and keeping. Every. Single. Day.

Yes, SMP is a wake up call to those who live to give over their power to the validator.  Validators matter less mostly because they stray away from what made them great validators in the first place.  If you think this is a statement about social media and advertising in general, you are all wet.  It goes back to Duncan Hines.  Do not blame the validator for dilution as that is their endgame, just as we are the products of Google and Facebook, not the customer.  We can and have to choose to do the work ourselves.

The answer will be in community — our willingness to say here is where my creative business resides — the place we belong and if you, the couple, want to be part of that place, come on in and, if not, go find the place you seek.

If it is about community, empathy, authenticity, then marketing dollars and the calculation of ROI has to shift.  It is incredibly myopic to value your investment based solely on the business that comes back to you in a particular season.  Instead, your investment should be based on the meaningful conversations you are able to have because of the investment.  If you are paying to be seen in an ocean of pretty you will be lost.  Instead, how can you connect with those that care in ways that matter to both you and your client?  Will you invest in being smarter about what you most care about? Or are you going to seek out the next validator so you do not have to do the work? 

I have heard that everyone who has already invested in SMP should take that money and spend it on marketing somewhere else.  Better to go to Vegas and bet on black.  The moon is beautiful but will always be a reflection of the sun. The lesson is to spend those dollars on yourself and the intention of your art and your creative business.  Build a community that matters, live in your own light.  Easier said than done, of course, but SMP’s demise tells us that, today, you really do not have a choice.