3 ms·

I know a lot of people working to make the world better, that have had to move onto other things because they lack an understanding of advertising. In fact most

I know a lot of people working to make the world better, that have had to move onto other things because they lack an understanding of advertising. In fact most people I meet who strongly desire to serve others almost completely misunderstand how advertising works. Working to make the world better shouldn't be mutually exclusive to understanding advertising, but often seems to be.

SlowRobotAhead 8y ago
>And I know a lot of people working to make the world better, that have had to move onto other things because they lack an understanding of advertising. Such as? I can’t seem to think of any examples.
- QuantumGood 8y ago
  It would be fair to say this is tied pretty tightly to lack of business skills. I think most of us expect that on the "Most Admired/Least Admired Scale" marketers clump towards the bottom, not the top. There are plenty of failed KickStarters/GoFundMe's to peruse, but this is endemic among non-profits. While many do NOT offer services that could be self-supporting, many others could be, but there is insufficient business or advertising understanding to pursue being successfully self-supporting. Among inventors, many pursue licensing or finding large partners (a reasonable idea, as far as it goes), but I've seen some pretty ridiculous advertising attempts. But the real gold mine is from the files of marketing consultants working with teachers/service providers. Only some clients are in the "trying to make the world a better place" category, but many overlap that. Here's where you really find the greatest numbers of admirable folks very out of their depth at marketing.
TeMPOraL 8y ago
> Working to make the world better shouldn't be mutually exclusive to understanding advertising, but often seems to be. From what I've observed, working to make the world better isn't mutually exclusive with understanding advertising, but is strongly anticorrelated with wanting to do it. People who think about making the world better tend to understand that advertising is a cancer on society.

SlowRobotAhead 8y ago

>And I know a lot of people working to make the world better, that have had to move onto other things because they lack an understanding of advertising. Such as? I can’t seem to think of any examples.

QuantumGood 8y ago
It would be fair to say this is tied pretty tightly to lack of business skills. I think most of us expect that on the "Most Admired/Least Admired Scale" marketers clump towards the bottom, not the top. There are plenty of failed KickStarters/GoFundMe's to peruse, but this is endemic among non-profits. While many do NOT offer services that could be self-supporting, many others could be, but there is insufficient business or advertising understanding to pursue being successfully self-supporting. Among inventors, many pursue licensing or finding large partners (a reasonable idea, as far as it goes), but I've seen some pretty ridiculous advertising attempts. But the real gold mine is from the files of marketing consultants working with teachers/service providers. Only some clients are in the "trying to make the world a better place" category, but many overlap that. Here's where you really find the greatest numbers of admirable folks very out of their depth at marketing.

TeMPOraL 8y ago

> Working to make the world better shouldn't be mutually exclusive to understanding advertising, but often seems to be. From what I've observed, working to make the world better isn't mutually exclusive with understanding advertising, but is strongly anticorrelated with wanting to do it. People who think about making the world better tend to understand that advertising is a cancer on society.