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I think there's a distinction to be made between advertising and marketing, at least the way I define them. Advertising is about making consumers aware of a pr
by ddeck 11y ago
I think there's a distinction to be made between advertising and marketing, at least the way I define them.
Advertising is about making consumers aware of a product or service that they may use if they were aware of it. This seems reasonable and generally beneficial.
Marketing is about using psychological techniques to manipulate consumers preferences such that they want to consume products and services that they otherwise wouldn't.
Unfortunately this segment of the industry had grown rapidly over the past few decades and techniques to exploit our cognitive deficiencies have improved tremendously.
- punee 11y agoYeah, it's just too bad you're the only person in the world to define advertising and marketing that way, I guess? At least among people who know what they're talking about.
- ddeck 11y agoWell the labels are unimportant. The point is that certain elements of advertising/marketing seem reasonable and it could be argued that they are value adding to consumers as well as the advertisers, while others are manipulative and outright unethical.
- punee 11y agoThat's not a claim that will meet much opposition. However, to claim that marketing is inherently "manipulative", or that manipulative tactics are even a significant part of it, seems a little ill-informed. Y Combinator's motto is "Make something people want". To the overwhelming majority of practitioners, this is exactly what marketing sets out to do.
- asr 11y agoThis distinction is generally made when economists think about advertising too -- for example: http://economics.virginia.edu/sites/economics.virginia.edu/files/Information%20content%20of%20advertising.pdf http://economics.virginia.edu/sites/economics.virginia.edu/f... Though I've never heard "advertising" and "marketing" used to describe information content vs. persuasion, it would be a great shorthand.