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Marketing is not perfectly ok, at best it alerts us to things we weren't going to buy because we didn't know about them. But most of the time it either 1) encou

Marketing is not perfectly ok, at best it alerts us to things we weren't going to buy because we didn't know about them. But most of the time it either 1) encourages us to buy things we weren't already going to buy (like the $20 shit they sell on tv) or 2) attempts to win mindshare/sales over some other competing brand, which is also wasteful because it's ultimately just a product trying to carve itself a larger piece of a relatively fixed-size pie. Or it does some other nefarious stuff like trying to boost PR of some business or sway our political opinion. And many of the methods that marketing uses to accomplish these goals leverage negative human psychology like making us feel ugly/fat/poor/stupid if we don't make that purchase we weren't going to make originally. Open a magazine/watch tv/disable adblock/look at roadside ads and you'll see that very rarely are ads actually making the world a better place.

tomsmeding 8y ago
I don't agree with your statements that (almost?) all marketing is bad because it tries to promote products. I believe a company has the right to try to get people interested in their product, because if not, how would people get to know about it? Hearing other people talk about it? Those other people should've known about it in the first place (how?) and this is promotion as well. The idea of product promotion at its core is not bad, it's inherent to how our economy works. > And many of the methods that marketing uses to accomplish these goals leverage negative human psychology like making us feel ugly/fat/poor/stupid if we don't make that purchase we weren't going to make originally. _This_ is where I agree with you, however. Promotion is one thing, and making the world a better place with every single thing you do is hardly possible (or necessary), but making the world a decidedly worse place is not what we're looking for. The shaming tactic that you describe is something that works in marketing, and it may not even be lying, but it's bad.
ajmurmann 8y ago
You are conflating marketing and advertising. While advertising is part of marketing, marketing involves so much more.
trumped 8y ago
Marketing makes the world a warmer place (planet warming) ... by making us buy stuff we don't need.

tomsmeding 8y ago

I don't agree with your statements that (almost?) all marketing is bad because it tries to promote products. I believe a company has the right to try to get people interested in their product, because if not, how would people get to know about it? Hearing other people talk about it? Those other people should've known about it in the first place (how?) and this is promotion as well. The idea of product promotion at its core is not bad, it's inherent to how our economy works. > And many of the methods that marketing uses to accomplish these goals leverage negative human psychology like making us feel ugly/fat/poor/stupid if we don't make that purchase we weren't going to make originally. _This_ is where I agree with you, however. Promotion is one thing, and making the world a better place with every single thing you do is hardly possible (or necessary), but making the world a decidedly worse place is not what we're looking for. The shaming tactic that you describe is something that works in marketing, and it may not even be lying, but it's bad.

ajmurmann 8y ago

You are conflating marketing and advertising. While advertising is part of marketing, marketing involves so much more.

trumped 8y ago

Marketing makes the world a warmer place (planet warming) ... by making us buy stuff we don't need.