This is likely not a popular position - but hear me out.  I believe in censorship.  I love censorship.  I support and defend the ability to censor.

Censorship is alive and well in marketing.  I believe we call it brand experience and defend it vigorously.  "Mr Manager you can use these words, this font and these colors only - and if you have a problem with it and can't follow the guidelines - I'll just role your head right out the door."  Maybe you've heard of the brand police in your company... Sometimes censorship shows up as customer experience.  In the ecommerce world we design customer experience in the store front, in the check out process and in the products that we choose to sell on our web sites.

If my company sells, Dora the Explorer products to children, I defend my right to censor the inclusion of Playboy, Bud Light or other products that I deem inappropriate to my customers and what they expect from me.  I censor them regularly in every path of communication that I control to my customers.

At home as a parent I regularly censor my children.  If they threaten me or verbally assault me and the rules I have in my household - I defend my right to censor them and expect them to behave differently in my home - in my domain.

In the work place, IBM, Microsoft and others censor their employees and many of us defend their right to do so.  It is common practice to have workplace rules against the distribution of pornagraphic material.  Other materials are also censored.  Examples might be instructions on how to build a pipe bomb and blow up your boss or slanderous materials that are used against certain races of people.  These companies censor their employees and do so vigorously.  I support their ability to do this.

So why is it that we don't support censorship on a much grandeur scale?  Consider Yahoo, Google and others that want to do business in China and must submit to the censorship of China for the content that they can distribute inside of China?  China censors what content is deemed as appropriate for their citizens.  They claim the same right to censor that we defend for IBM, Microsoft and others.  What gives us the right to impose our standards of censorship on China when we so vigorously defend the right to censor in the United States at home, on the Internet and in the workplace? 

Hmmm - it seems to me that censorship is a good thing and that individual entities each have the right to censor according to their own defined standards within their own defined domain.  Whether that be a home, an ecommerce storefront, a workplace or a nation.

The right to free speech, is perhaps a unique American expectation that even the marketing profession adapts, curtails and changes to fit their own self-serving needs.  Hear, hear for censorship and the ability to define and defend the brand experience!

Now, if I can just get a copy of the brand guidelines for China and how they have applied it to the Olympics - that would make for interesting reading and a noteworthy case study for the Harvard Business Review.  It would also help me know how to automate and build censorship into my email marketing, messaging systems and CRM platforms.  After all I have an obligation to protect the brand...

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