I don't disagree that many(most? all?) successful marketing people approach the task in this fashion, but I wonder if we really have to do it that way. For exa

I don't disagree that many(most? all?) successful marketing people approach the task in this fashion, but I wonder if we really have to do it that way. For example, take the "community manager" role that is popular in some companies. This is a full on marketing role. The goal is to create good feelings about the product and build a community that people want to join around it. However, I don't see anything wrong with that per se. In fact, in many niche markets (craft beer is a good example), the community manager tries to promote the entire industry (to be fair, in the craft beer industry, converting the average mega beer drinker to craft beer is good for business). Often, these people are working 100% in concert with the desires of the consumer. Also having to do with beer (hmmm... coincidence?), if you've ever spent time in the UK you know about the Weatherspoon pub chain. It is a massive company, with pubs everywhere. It undercuts the prices of the local, independent pubs and provides a kind of homogenised experience. But, good grief it does a good job. Every pub has an amazing selection of real ale in good condition -- sometimes at half the price of competing pubs. They have real ale and cider "festivals" and promote small breweries. They lobby the government for lower taxes on beer and work with the rest of the industry to create desirable business conditions for pubs (against the rising tide of cafes, wine bars and clubs). They save listed buildings and turn them into interesting venues. It's all of these actions that makes you think, "I just can't be against these guys, even if I want to support small independent pubs". I often wonder where the pub industry in the UK would be without Weatherspoons. So I think it's possible to take your job as a marketing person and use it as an opportunity to do something good (at least from some people's perspective) when it aligns with your interests. When you get it really right, I think you start working very hard to find those opportunities and ideally concentrate on them exclusively. I'm even going to go so far as to say that it's not necessarily marketers who make this a very rare occurrence. I suspect doing something like that would be a dream job for many people. I think the normal marketing job is really the reality imposed upon them by the business. The business, as a whole, is not interested in making the world a better place. They are interested in making as much money as possible. As a closing thought, I've often considered how wonderful a job in marketing or sales could be. What better job than to find someone that needs your product and introduce them to it? How amazing would it be to see people who are suffering and to think, "Hey, if they used our product instead, their life would be a lot better"? Instead, sales people are told, "Hey, we know our product sucks, but it's your job to sell it anyway. Sell the sizzle, not the steak. As long as we cut out our competitors, it doesn't matter how bad our product is. The customer will have to buy from us." It's that dynamic that makes marketing and sales a job from hell.