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Hacking Is the Opposite of Marketing
- PaulHoule 5y agoSome marketers think like "hackers", that is, "growth hackers". Marketing usually encourage you to be a consumer instead of a maker, unless they are selling something like 3-d printers or other stuff for makers.
- habitue 5y agoThis is a worthless nitpick but redstone in Minecraft was added explicitly so people could do crazy things like build calculators etc. It's still cool, but not exactly unexpected
- gnull 5y agoAgreed. Also, Turing completeness and expressing computations from one domain in another are relatively basic CS concepts. In some Computability courses it would be a mere homework problem. It has been disappointing for me that lots of people who call themselves hackers (like amateur Capture-The-Flag players or security people) are doing something rather basic for Theoretical Computer Science. Go to a security conference you will find tons of them. Real hackers are 1% of security professionals and hardcore mathematicians, writers, physicists — look at Richard Feynman. Compexity theorists, for example, literally touch the essence of what computation is. EDIT: expanded abbreviations
- npteljes 5y agoFully agreed. More unexpected were the block update detectors, before the official Observer block of course.
- tmcw 5y ago[author] Thank you, I was winging it a bit with secondhand (YouTube video) Minecraft knowledge :)
- WallyFunk 5y ago> redstone in Minecraft was added explicitly so people could do crazy things like build calculators Anything that has logic gates in it can be used to build out complex programs. Since Conways Game of Life allows for logic gates, you can build anything you want, albeit with a lot more processing power needed since it's built on an abstraction. You can even build Conways Game of Life with Conways Game of Life, like a sort of fractal program / quine.
- davidivadavid 5y agoMeh? I mean, some marketing would definitely fit the definition of hacking that is provided here. (Ask a random person in the street if they think the most "creative" profession is ad man or developer.) The author confuses marketing messages with marketing, which is the act of creating those messages in the first place. That marketing messages that are specific are more effective than generic ones is a decent rule of thumb, although by no means universal either.
- refurb 5y agoActually I always considered marketing as a type of hacking. Figuring out what consumers want (features, appearance, feelings, etc) and tweaking how you talk about your product to create them.
- nprateem 5y agoYes, that's the market research step you're supposed to do to understand customer needs and desires and to test your value proposition etc
- philipswood 5y agoSet Godin gave the first definition of marketing that didn't feel totally icky to me. I'm paraphrasing because he's put out so much material and restated his position so many times. We have culture, a shared set of wordviews. Marketing is engaging with culture, purposefully trying to change it. In effect homesteading a bit of culture.
- amelius 5y agoengaging with -> hacking into
- philipswood 5y agoMaybe, maybe not. A buffer-overflow is a hack, but so was markdown at first.
- strogonoff 5y agoI like the 4-persona model Ian Cheng gives. In it, marketing is (more or less) part of Emissary’s domain, taking care of how you integrate your creation into the surrounding world and ensure its continued existence. One of the other masks is literally called the “Hacker”, though it’s not really the opposite of the Emissary per se. All four masks are in some aspects opposite to each other and can sometimes be at odds, and yet find ways to cooperate.
- specialist 5y agoEdit: This Ian Cheng? A Portal to Infinity https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TO6Luilc4Bo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TO6Luilc4Bo Heh. He hooked me with the bicameral mind cite. Watching now. ~~Sounds interesting. Link? Sorry, my search-fu is weak.~~
- cblconfederate 5y agoHacking honest / marketing dishonest is a false dichotomy, however marketing is almost never honest
- solatic 5y agoThere's a bit of a non sequitur here. Does the author think that Redis wasn't marketed? Or that most of Redis's users are using Redis in a way that it wasn't designed for? Sure, there's a difference between creative thinking and doing something that somebody gave you the direct inspiration for. So what? By definition, you can't build a product for off-label reasons. If you knew what the off-label reasons were, then you could market them and put them on the label. Off-label uses basically just happen or they don't, and it's not really the purview of the product builder to try and force it to happen.
- matt123456789 5y agoI don’t want to speak for the author, but I think the point they were trying to make can be clarified using the difference in marketing between Redis (from redis.io) and Redis Enterprise (from redislabs.com). The former includes a description of the problems that the software solves. The latter includes a “Solutions” tab that tells CXOs how to use it in a way that makes money.
- tlochhead 5y agoI think a better title would be “Hacking Is The Opposite of Not Hacking”. Marketing is the market side of product-market fit. Marketing puts your product in front of an audience so you can see what works and what doesn’t. Marketing helps you scale your growth with what’s working. Hacking is a must in marketing to uncover competitive ways to grow.
- b0rsuk 5y agoHow do you call the action of informing people in local area about the existence of a (new) product or service? It doesn't seem to fit the author's definition of "marketing". I think the article strongly assumes an economy of abundance (like capitalism). In an economy of abundance, there's trouble selling stuff, so you need to convince people they need something. The article comes from the assumption no one wants the plain thing. Clickbait title.
- soared 5y agoVery few people in the hn comments have a marketing degree so they were not taught that marketing has actual economic value in disseminating information so consumers can make rational choices. Many top comments on hn think that the world could exist without marketing because consumers would just automatically know about every single product ever, and never need anything new.
- convolvatron 5y agobut the purpose of advertising isn't to simply inform you of the existence of products you might already need but not be aware of. the purpose of advertising is convince you that you need to buy something whether or not it will actually cause you pleasure or make your life easier or happier in any way. advertising is not marketing, but since marketing is responsible for creating these arguably false narratives, its not much of a stretch to say that: hacking is truth - making a thing in the world that works in a new way marketting is deception - making you believe something you wouldn't otherwise for the purpose of enriching someone else
- b0rsuk 5y ago> but the purpose of advertising isn't to simply inform you of the existence of products you might already need but not be aware of. What's the term for the action?
- RocketSyntax 5y agoMarketing is the science of creating and capturing value. If your goal is to create a product and get it in the hands of as many people as possible, then open source is just a distribution strategy which one of the 4Ps of marketing, place
- bumbada 5y agoNo, marketing is the study of markets, and the study of markets is very similar to hacking. You find a need or necessity of a market and look for a solution, sometimes it is even a technical solution to the need and you are properly hacking. Marketing is not sales, it is not copywriting, it is not setting a motto. This comes at the end when everything is known about a market. They are executive decisions that could be done by the marketing department, or not. Most of the time small and medium company owners contact copywriters directly for example.
- sandwichinvest 5y agoIs there anywhere that marketing is defined as "the study of markets"?
- LegitShady 5y agoThe study of markets is economics. Marketing is advertising. Disagree hard.
- France_is_bacon 5y agoMarketing is not advertising. Disagree hard. Of course, it depends on what definitions one uses. Here's what the AMA (American Marketing Association) says that marketing is: "Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large." Advertising is one form of marketing. Advertising, generally, is print, TV, mailing, banner ads on websites. Generally speaking. Giving a talk at a trade show, writing and article for a newspaper or some kind of internet forum, cold calling, word-of-mouth, and all the rest - are not "advertising." Or market research. That's marketing, but it's not advertising, that's for sure. Competitive analysis. That's not advertising. The study of markets is economics, I agree with that, but the study of markets also pertains to marketing, clearly. One does not cancel the other. The problem is that so many people have emotional issues with marketing, not objective rational view of it. Basically, it ties into money, too - people also are irrational as hell when it comes to their own money. The two are related. Like, maybe people are pissed off at marketing, because they have problems with budgeting and holding onto their money, and buy anything that an advertisement throws in front of them. Poor self-discipline. So they blame marketing instead of themselves. I don't know, I'm not armchair psychiatrying here, but I think there's something deeper about marketing that really gets people emotionally riled up and hating it for no logical reason. I've read accounts (on reddit), where people go home and get on Amazon, and just go through and buy every single night until they run out of money for the month. Yeesh. That's a personal problem. It required a psychiatrist or therapist to solve for a person like that. Not being angry at marketing. I'm not directing this at any one person, or that it is the only reason. I'm just saying.
- soared 5y agoThe is the generic “marketing sucks” drivel that unfortunately does better than it should on hn. There is no nuance or thought put into this post. This isn’t some novel idea. Some research may have helped the author. They are literally incorrect (the author is talking about advertising, not marketing).
- motohagiography 5y agoStated so clearly. Thanks to OP. The Redis example extends to where the "for hackers," or "for technologists" marketing is implied, since nobody else cares about the tech, but in working with all these things made for us (hackers), it never occurrs to us that we need to make something for someone who isn't us. (since if we didn't use it ourselves, it wouldn't be an honest service, the internal reasoning goes) I've certainly fallen into a trap of working with and making things nobody else sincerely cares about (security), which is why I make a living, but also the ceiling on how successful I've been at it. Security tools are also a unique flavour of marketing problem because they are governance and remdedial mechanisms, which means they aren't individually desirable, and they are mostly for mediating and managing others. You have to get positioned between the user and an antagonist. Security for everyone means security for no one, but security for yacht owners, that's a product. I'm marvelling at how few words the OP was able to express this in. It's as good as YC's "make something people want." Security products are bit like machine medicine, where you don't cure illness, you make a business of managing it. I'd suspect there is a direct 1:1 analogy between pharmaceutical marketing and security marketing problems. So much to think about.
- aeoleonn 5y agoThis article, for me, isn't readable nor worth reading. Hard to get through that meaningless, irrational conjecture of "hacking is the opposite of marketing" to find the point of or value in the article. To say "Marketing is the opposite of Hacking" makes about as much sense as saying "the Orion constellation is the opposite of the planet Neptune". -- Not everything has an opposite or a reciprocal. Also, just to be extra controversial, I am going to say: Marketing is Hacking.
- simonw 5y agoYou're missing out. I found the points it makes about how much more difficult it is to market a general purpose tool really useful.
- aeoleonn 5y agoAre you referring to this? "The thing about making general tools is that marketing is harder and you need to build narratives about how the general thing is specifically useful"
- simonw 5y agoYes. I'm building a general purpose tool at the moment and this very much captured why I've been finding it hard to work out a food marketing approach for it.
- davidivadavid 5y agoThe trouble many purported "general purpose tools" run into is that what they're doing badly isn't the "marketing approach", it's the whole product. If you don't have a clear use case (or set of use cases) with a consumer in mind when building the product where your product outperforms the alternative, no "marketing approach" is going to save it.
- chiefalchemist 5y ago> Marketing dictates a style, context, and purpose for even the most general-purpose products. Yes, poor marketing does this. That is, focuses on features. On the other hand, most people are more intereted in benefits. We are selfish. We are constantly asking, "What's in it for me?" Features are typically product or market cenric. Benefits (e.g., save time) less so. All that said, I don't really understand the benefit of comparing hacking to marketing. And I like to dabble in both.
- namelosw 5y ago> Marketing tells you that this particular non-stick pan is the pan you’ll use to make omelette... Exactly this. I'm Chinese but I didn't look into Chinese cooking until recently, and here's the thing: You can cook hundreds of different Chinese cuisine, and eat them perfectly with several simple tools. It's an example of one-size-fits-all that actually works, and works really well. Everything will be sliced and chopped with a single cleaver, from home cook to professional food carving. Wok for most of the things, from deep/stir/pan-frying, to boiling and steaming (with a small rack). Everybody knows how to coat them and make them practically non-stick. And of course the obligated chopsticks for most of the things. . What about soup? Just pick up the bowl to drink. Not like most one-size-fits-all solutions, they are not clunky at all and I rarely wanted to reach for more tools. Funnily though, the gadget culture/marketing/consumerism didn't stop in China. A lot of families, like mine, for example, are still convinced to buy a lot of kitchen gadgets even though most of them are never used twice.
- psychomugs 5y agoI'm not into cooking at all but I'm reminded of Alton Brown ranting about these "unitaskers... devices that are created for one job and one job only." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgFeVlw2Ywg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgFeVlw2Ywg
- toivo 5y agoI think this is a very interesting way to look at it. Brings iPhone and iOS to mind, how they pigeonhole the user into using the device the way that they marketed it, going as far as removing functionality.
- France_is_bacon 5y agoI don't understand the continuous hate or disdain for marketing. Saying hacking is the opposite of marketing is like saying lounge chairs are the opposite of camels. Neither makes the least bit of sense. Who do you want - your buddy that can pull your teeth out with a pair of rusty pliers (wow, hacking!!!) or a board certified dentist that specializes in orthodontics, or surgery using specialized tools? Nobody ever said McGuivering is bad, mind you. Who has never used a penny for a screwdriver? But who the f wants to do that for everything? Who wants to create their own custom operating system that will take 18 months to create before you can even use a computer, which of course, you make from plywood, horseshoes, and and the blood of 13 virgins. Create your own hacked toaster, chairs, microwave oven, electric automobile...who the hell has time to hack everything that they need in life. But back to marketing. All what marketing means is to let people know, by any way that works, is that you have a thing that can help other people. As they say, what good is creating a cure for cancer in your basement, and never tell a single soul about it? That's just dumb. You think that people will know by magic? I mean, even word-of-mouth is marketing. Everything is marketing, if it means letting people know. Posters, flyers, emails, cold calling, tv ads, radio ads, giving seminars/webinars, web sites - everything is marketing that let's people know that you have something that can be useful for them. Even supermarkets and department stores are actually marketing - people go to them not to buy things, but to see what is available, what choices are available, and THEN buy what they need. Stores are pure marketing, that's their primary purpose, and then, after you see what they got on their shelves, THEN you make the purchase. Sure, some people may buy things without looking and reading and looking at all the alternatives, but that's only because they already did it in the past.
- cannabis_sam 5y ago>All what marketing means is to let people know, by any way that works, is that you have a thing that can help other people. What is this? The 1890s? Marketing has regressed far from “letting people know”, through and beyond psychological manipulation into a world where truth and reality literally does not matter as long you market it correctly to each demographic.
- France_is_bacon 5y ago
- 8eye 5y agodidn’t read the article, but there are black hat marketers that more than dabble in hacking their way into mindshare.