Yesterday as I was getting off my flight back to O’Hare, I saw a series of ads in the Jet Bridge. They were about poster-size, and each piece was advertising Symantec.

Here is what they said:“Symantec — Cloud Protected.”

“Symantec — Tablet Protected.”

“Symantec — Network Protected.”

I didn’t get a chance to take a picture of these posters, but I did get this one in the terminal.

Protecting the world’s information.

Is that compelling to you?

Clouds and networks and information?

No. Of course not. It’s rather boring, actually. Plain. Extremely uninteresting. And lazy.

Symantec isn’t protecting technology and information, of course.

It’s protecting people.

Families.

Futures. 

It’s protecting your life’s work.

It’s protecting the American Dream.

It’s protecting your family pictures, your home movies, and your very memories. (What’s the first thing most people say they’ll pull out of a fire?)

It’s protecting the very foundation of our culture.

And all Symantec wants to talk about is information and networks and clouds.

This is a perfect and tremendously telling snapshot of what’s wrong in technology marketing today. Given the opportunity to present the great surplus of emotion in its business, Symantec decided to talk about technology.

Find the emotion in your work. And market it like crazy.