Service as a perspective for innovation

Marketing Fatigue Syndrome
Much internet blogs and web innovations are about money. This puts people like me in an awkward position, in which we constantly have to defend the fact that not all communication is marketing. I am not money driven but service minded.
Most questions I get with regards to intranet are about moving internet hypes into the digital work space. They are therefore often about marketing and initiatives to market the own community.
This is tricky and most unsatisfactory: marketeers have a different agenda than organizational communicators. For let's not pretend that internal communication is the same as marketing. Our colleagues are not our selling target audience. I myself get quite tired and annoyed by marketing. Call it marketing fatigue syndrome.

Service as driver on intranet
Intranets are more about interaction between employees than they are about branding. Sure, the corporate identity supports the brand, but from a content perspective pushing branded content won't get you a standing ovation from the supposed target audiences.
Choosing an alternative path than branding and marketing means that people like me walk a more silent and maybe solitary path. At least when you compare this path with the loud marketing majority. I don't shout, but listen to what's surrounding me: people. Not people to sell stuff to, but people to support and facilitate.
Service is more sustainable than sales, for the simple fact that services are people driven and marketing is sales driven. Good intranet services create a positive feeling about the working environment and the organization. When you are facilitated or supported in a professional way by the intranet, the positive feeling this creates outweighs the sense of well-being that's promoted by the empty branding statements we find on our desktop.