I was adopted when I was all but four days old. My Mother, one of the kindest, most benevolent people you’d meet, had started the New York City chapter of a program called “Birth Right“. It was a program to assist pregnant teens that wanted to go full term.

My Mom would help the young ladies through their pregnancy by housing them, educating them, and helping them, if they chose to do so, put their child up for adoption. Imagine growing up with a bunch of pregnant hormonal women surrounding you.

As legend goes, my birth mother was a young opera singer who had an affair with her professor, he, being married, she being young and full of promise. Having gotten pregnant at 18, she had her entire operatic career ahead of her. So, she found good souls to help her through the difficult times.

My adopted Father was a bit of a child prodigy, having been the principal viola in the Minneapolis symphony Orchestra at the age of 17, he was offered a free ride at the Juilliard, he passed up the opportunity to stay home and help his widowed Mother raise his four younger siblings.

I imagine that when they met my birth Mother, hearing her story, having three daughters and wanting a son, I was like a dream choice. More interestingly, my Father was adopted too, so it was almost as if I was a legacy. Hence my parents took me in, accepting years of terror and tears. And, oh what a terror I was, indeed.

Growing up, I got into trouble in every conceivable way, shape and form, both in life and in school. I would not trade my tyrannical teens for anything; they’re the fiber of my being.

Working through all the happiness and miseries I’ve encountered, I always thought about what my parents did for me. It’s interesting to think that there are people who can care for others, that they don’t know, to the point that they will provide them the warmth of shelter, the substance of food, and their hearts for guidance.

My Mother still helps people to this very day. She is the Director for an inner city not for profit school supporting the poor and protecting immigrant mothers from a predatory world, The Caroline House. My Father left a successful long career as a marketing and product development consultant to some of the world’s biggest brands, to become a Deacon in the Catholic Church. I think he traded up.

So, I was raised to value the caring for and service of others. Besides that, a master of marketing also raised me. My childhood is filled with memories of my Dad, literally, hand cutting out presentation slides, years before power point. He’d sometimes sit in the dining room, splicing audio and video reels for training cassettes and videos that he would give in massive seminars.

When I was 15, my Dad didn’t give me books on baseball, he gave me books like, “How to Negotiate With Anyone, Around The World“. I grew up being fed a steady diet of cutting edge technology, marketing books, and Mozart. I can recall, after having graduated High School, my Father gave me a book called, “The Future of Network Marketing“, man was he prescient.

I had a Sharp Wizard. I got an Apple Newton for Christmas, and my first laptop ever was a 1983 Tandy TRS 80-100. As a teen, instead of going to camp, I took programming lessons in C, DOS, Foxpro and Helix. To say my Dad did me a favor is a complete understatement. I would not be where I am, and who I am without his influence.

Taking my Dad’s marketing and technology savvy, and mixing it with my Mom’s massive heart, and years of fuck ups, rebuilds and re-masters, I arrived where I am today. As a colleague put it, a “…really, overly aggressive, self assured, no bs..”, kinda guy.

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I write and share so that I can help others prosper and grow, not so that they learn how to make more money and manipulate the masses. In fact, I really care very little for capitalism, I care very little for direct response and, I care very little for branding.

What I care about, is people. That’s why I’m a marketer. I won’t work for companies whose vision and goals don’t align with mine. To me, it is essential that I can stand by the actions of others, what they say, do, publish, sell and represent.

I once made the mistake of taking a job just for the money; I ended up with the world’s worst boss. She was so miserable, that I only lasted but two months. Having gone to a friends company to sell them something they didn’t want or need, they were willing to sign a deal because they were my friends. She co-opted the conversation because I did not follow a script, and began to destroy everything.

On the cab ride back to our offices, she shat upon me like she was a God unto herself. She said, “Brad, I didn’t see them having any reason to do business with us, you didn’t follow the script. I mean, why would they ever do business with us?” I responded, “They would do business with me, because they trust and know me, and I am their friend. That’s how I’ve gotten and kept much of my business.” She laughed and called me “delusional”, telling me, “Nobody ever does business because of that”. I don’t think I need to say anymore.

Her attitude was not about building relationships, or providing meaningful value to people, it was about making money. It was almost as if she hated people. That’s depressing, think of it, someone working in a job that is all about people, and not even liking people. It’s funny, but in marketing, you meet these types all over the place.

On a flight back to New York, for AdTech, I can recall almost the entire plane being filled with marketing professionals. You could hear their conversations, some were great, and some were gross. In the seat behind me there was a loud mouthed, obnoxious marketer who would not stop hitting on the married gal next to him, as well as bragging of how much money he was making. The only thing I picked up from this guy, was that he really didn’t give a shit about people, just himself.

At AdTech, I met a gal at a booth, whom stringently defended spam like marketing practices with the statement of, “well, consumers should know and read the privacy and terms of service statements, we’ve done our jobs.” It was a flaccid argument to me. While you can say, “we give them the info and the options”, it is all to often those consumers are like deer in headlights in the face of complex terms of service, and the intentions’ of Marketers.

Maybe it’s my upbringing; the notion that I have to believe that what I’m selling and doing is for the benefit of others, and not a negative detractor. Maybe it’s a utopian vision of the future, which may or may not become reality. Maybe, just maybe, I actually really like people, so I take extra steps to prevent harm to others. Whatever it is, I do this because I like people

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This past year, the sites I worked with had a 50% increase in traffic. I didn’t devise any masterful plan to manipulate. Actually, what I did was to build a concerted effort of giving back, along with obvious optimizations.

For research, I spent time getting intimate with my inner consumer. I found myself inundated with mass amounts of messages whose focus was to milk my wallet. “60% of Sale!”, “Free Shipping”, “Winter Close Out”, “The Six Dollar Burger, for Three Dollars”. Every message wanted more from me; everyone wanted a piece of me.

It seemed that consumers spending habits and behaviors showed they didn’t want more crap; their ears became deaf to the same old bullshit.  Every single marketer and advertiser was trying to figure out new ways to milk the mainstream, instead of trying to build a relationship by giving a little back.

Perhaps saying every single marketer is a bit thick. I can point to brands that focused on providing more meaning and value to consumers; Zappos seems to be top of mind. I could say Walmart, but those sons of bitches went and knocked off Girl Scout Cookies.

Having been born into the marketing world with a heart, I continually find myself in moral dilemmas.  Behavioral targeting was top of mind for me in 2009, as was segmented behavioral profiling. Both of them seem to be an inevitable future, yet I don’t feel comfortable with the implications created with the future mind mapping qualities of marketing.

One of my great dilemmas has been surrounding the notion that marketers cannot always take, at some point they must give. It’s an interesting argument, one that I believe falls between two camps.

You have people and companies building brands. Then you have people and companies just trying to make a buck. In the marketing world it’s easy to see this divide. How many of you have seen the million and one bloggers hawking goods to help you monetize your blog, or make ‘mad money’ working with some new marketing plan.

On Twitter, I have been followed by a gaggle of these geese, none of them providing any real value to me, just trying to sell me some shitty program. Almost always, when I click through to their site, I am immediately smacked with a roadblock to join their mailing list, or purchase their programs.

(Just a side note: It is visual rape, when I get to your website and you greet me with a roadblock, marketing interruption at its worst.)

I am not always a fan of Seth Godin, but I have to give the man credit for continually, and relentlessly contributing content to the benefit of others. Not asking a dime, he keeps his marketing to an acceptable minimum. He is a benevolent brand, unto himself.

Tony Hsieh , of Zappos, is interestingly the same. Through his blog and tweets, he is continually contributing to others. This attitude seems, from the outside looking in, to trickle down through his organization. He’s built a brand that cherishes service to others, or giving one of the highest levels of service to its customers, despite their profile.

Zappos, Godin and others are continually contributing to the world in ways that cannot always be quantified. There’s no quantifiable way to see how Seth’s inspiration and motivations affect the hearts, minds, ideas and actions of others. I can’t put a number to how Tony’s tweets spark thoughts in my mind.

The act of giving often has no obvious impact. It’s an ever-elusive measure that can only be found in the hearts and minds of those they affect.  On the contrary, I believe that the act of taking has a direct and measureable impact.

In 2009, as we all scrambled for our “oh shit” hats, it was almost as if we forgot who we’re here to service in the first place. While capitalism is the reason many of us are here, it is not the only reason.

While we work to optimize our emails, segment our messages, making meaning of the data, we cannot forget it is people we’re working with. No matter what a spreadsheet tells you, there is more it will never tell you. Messages of meaning are not purely defined by loyalty and retention segmenting the shit out of their database.

Messages of meaning are ones like Google’s gift of $20mm on behalf of its customers, to multiple charities.  Sure, they’re probably doing it for PR reasons, yet there’s an impact to their effort.

Google can’t measure if more people will use their engine, or buy more ads, or get a Droid. They might try and measure the brand perception of consumers, yet even that will fall short. What they’ve essentially done is given back to others without the ability to get anything back. They’ve contributed to the world, without wanting.

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I talked about how we successfully increased traffic to our sites by 50% in the past year. There are more factors then just marketing alone. As a matter of fact, in the world I work, marketing is second seat to merchandising, and the power of product and value.

What was a measurable number was peoples willingness to listen to our brands, and engage them. Through one campaign, we were able to increase our Facebook fan base over 4000%. How, we offered our customers access to us. By having a public Q&A, we not only shared our motivations and ideas, but we also actively participated in a social discussion.

Through monthly email messaging campaigns, we were able to bring value to our customers by not asking them for a dime. Instead, we sought to entertain them and enlighten them. Through continuous campaigns, we delivered meaningful messages that increased our click-through over 20%, and lowered our opt-outs from 4-7% to nearly zero. We didn’t ask our customers for more, instead we offered them more.

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My wish and message for 2010, is that marketers realize there is more to this then the money. I can hear the cynics laughing at me already, no worry, I’ve been called crazy a million times before.

If you’re truly looking to build a brand, it cannot be done at the expense of others, it can only be done for others. Those looking to make money will always be able to do so, but they’ll continually be stuck trying to find fresh meat, as there is no loyalty for those that have no loyalty or concern for others.

In future, I’d like to see the consumers get educated. I’d like to see High Schools, Middle Schools and Elementary Schools begin to educate kids on consumerism, and the practices of the marketing and advertising world. While it is obvious that the new generations of youth have a higher sensitivity to bullshit, they’re still not aware as to the extent of which the world will go.

It is my hope that a new generation of marketers will rise up, like the Seth Godins, Piers Fawkes, and Tony Hsieh of the world. It is my hope that this generation will wield the blade of balance between building profits and brand. It is my hope that the advertisers and marketers of the world will recognize the power of giving, and give generously.

In these times of trouble,  it is amazing to see those that are greedy are only getting greedier. I assure you, this cannot last. You can only abuse and offend the people for so long, until they will turn their backs on the bad behavior.

We are here to serve the people; they are not here to serve our corporations.