You know that ultra-confusing quote that states “the more things change, the more they stay the same?”  Think about it for a minute in terms of stenography and marketing.

Stenography has roots all the way back to 400 B.C. when a historian named Xenophon recorded the life of Socrates. The Romans had their own version of stenographers recording Senate speeches. And did you know stenography was even linked to witchcraft during the Middle Ages?

Marketing (science and art of selling a product or service), like stenography, is said to be as old as history itself. From the beginning of time, someone has always been trying to persuade someone else to purchase something.  However, what we know as “outbound marketing” had its real birth in 1450 with Gutenberg’s invention of moveable type. This invention allowed for the mass production of advertisements and, eventually, magazines.

Now back to the quote. Since the inception of both stenography and marketing, each has evolved tremendously over time, but each still has the same initial purpose.  Stenography/court reporting has gone from actual writing in shorthand, to steno machines with services such as realtime that can appear immediately in front of the client on an iPad or laptop.  Marketing has gone from purely outbound marketing, which pushes products or services to customers heavily through interruptive traditional media, to inbound marketing (customers find you) where services are purchased after marketers essentially earn the customer’s trust (social media, blogs, inforgraphics, etc…). Despite change, the end goal is still to get a customer to purchase a product or service.