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It's really hard to have a discussion about this topic without having a scoped definition of marketing for the purpose of discourse, and defining it such that "

It's really hard to have a discussion about this topic without having a scoped definition of marketing for the purpose of discourse, and defining it such that "everything is marketing" isn't very interesting. Everyone keeps talking past each other as long as someone takes ads and promotional materials for marketing while the next commenter considers pricing and placement to be marketing. The point of the original article is going to be 100% missed and is impossible to engage with if "cookie box on grocery store shelf costs 1.3 units of money" is taken to be marketing in the same sense as what they are talking about. Next you might as well define "respond" to mean "have neurons fire in response to a sensory input." Unfortunately this same thing happens every time when the topic is discussed on HN.

libertine 5y ago
I think the main problem is that people think that advertising = marketing, while advertising is a marketing tool. Just like you have PR or Sponsorship. What would you consider pricing and placement to be if not marketing? Selling in Whole Foods is the same as selling in Walmart? It's the same type of consumers that shop around those places? A 1000$ smartphone vs 299$ one are targeted at the same people? Or price is just an arbitrary number given a cost and a random profit margin? My point still stands, that "nerds" are influenced in their purchase decisions just like anyone else despite using adblockers. The "Marketing Mix" was first approached in the 60's, it's not something I made up along the way to try to prove something. It's a whole discipline for some reason.
- Jensson 5y ago
  Pricing and placement are distribution, not marketing. Distribution strategies matters for marketing, but distribution isn't marketing. Marketing requires all of the 4 p's, if you lack the last one it isn't marketing. Marketing might give feedback on the other 3 p's, but they don't control them. Example of product launch without marketing: A product manager have an idea of a product that doesn't exist yet. Engineering developers the product. The manager decides the price based on what they need to deliver the product and tacks on some extra. They determine to distribute via the Android and Apple app stores, so launches the products there. Marketing is what happens after all of those decisions has been made. Marketing might have feedback that they should also release a web version, or that they might be able to increase the price, but that isn't the main function of marketing.
  - libertine 5y ago
    I don't understand the point that you're trying to make, like I never said that marketing owns everything and everyone bows down to marketing. That makes no sense. It's a discipline just like every other. Most decisions go through many departments, each with their own arguments, each more important than others. Who gets the final call on pricing? Most likely financial dept. and any other price changes will come out of marketing budget. Plus it differs from organization to organization. FMCGs, auto, media, all of them have different structures and relationships between these departments, each with different weights. You gave me an example of people launching a product without a marketing department, nothing else. You know what? It's the product manager that will give support to customers, and that doesn't mean they aren't doing customer support. I can give you a real example: There was an American company called Hasbro that in the 80's bought the rights to sell some Japanese toy, made in japan, rebranded to Transformers and the marketing guys decided to launch an animated series to try to help with sales by giving a background story to the toys. I think it was an advertising agency that wrote the scripts but I'm not sure. So yeah... Transformers, one of the most popular media franchises, was literally content marketing to sell rebranded japanese toys. So, no product development, no engineers, etc, an example without any of that.
  - the_af 5y ago
    > Pricing and placement are distribution, not marketing. Pricing and placement are very much marketing. Even where to place products on shelves is a form of marketing (e.g. whether to place them near the cash register or near other products, etc.) There are analytics done on which products people pick when they are placed next to other products. Even when you think your purchase decisions aren't influenced by marketing, they are. As for pricing: there are people whose job it is to find the best way to price products in order to "sell" the idea these are budget items or luxury items, etc. It is well known that pricing some things lower than a threshold is a bad strategy because people expect them to be higher priced. There's also the strategy of "anchoring" prices. All of these are examples of marketing, and there are many more.
- foxfluff 5y ago
  > What would you consider pricing and placement to be if not marketing? I'm ok with calling it marketing (I don't particularly care). It's just that I don't believe we can have fruitful discussion without first defining and scoping the terms enough that people don't constantly shift goalposts and talk past each other. This kind of thing just leads to very frustrating "discussion" where no matter what you say, someone is going to interject because they have a different idea of what the discussion is all about. Now the submission unfortunately doesn't define what it means by marketing, but I don't think it's talking about pricing or the decision where you sell a product. Kinda have to read between the lines, but it's probably talking about promotional content about the product. Definitely not pricing or the location where you choose to make a product available for purchase. My reading is that "the language and content traditionally used in promotional materials about a product do not appeal to nerds." It's probably off but not too far off. The author just didn't find the right words to say what they mean (or assumed the reader can infer), and instead said "marketing." Even with that interpretation, it wouldn't make for a very fruitful discussion, but at least it'd be a whole lot better than having someone explain why they don't think a typical startup landing page persuades them only to be argued against because "no, actually selling cookies at your local grocery store affects you!" I'm paraphrasing of course but I've seen the same discussion here over and over again. It's predictably silly. > My point still stands, that "nerds" are influenced in their purchase decisions just like anyone else despite using adblockers. Sure. I don't think the article is about that and I don't see what's the point of going down the "everything affects everything" line of reasoning in comments. That doesn't really say anything new, useful, actionable, or interesting.
  - libertine 5y ago
    >Now the submission unfortunately doesn't define what it means by marketing, but I don't think it's talking about pricing or the decision where you sell a product. Kinda have to read between the lines, but it's probably talking about promotional content about the product. Definitely not pricing or the location where you choose to make a product available for purchase. Well I was replying to a user that said he was not significantly affected by marketing, because he does things like sorting products by "cheapest" and reads the product ingredients. I simply said that those decisions are made purposefully and are not random. It's a way to position products. A product it's cheap because it was designed that way. It won't lose value over time dropping the price tiers until it reaches the price with almost 0% margin, rendering it into a great deal that simply followed some natural event of dropping price while retaining it's value. About the main article I simply said that we should be aware that "promotional content" is everywhere, and relying on the illusion that "the marketing never catch me, I use adblockers" is just that, an illusion. That probably won't even make them wonder they are actually being promoted to. Flagging content as promotion is the exception, not the rule.

libertine 5y ago

I think the main problem is that people think that advertising = marketing, while advertising is a marketing tool. Just like you have PR or Sponsorship. What would you consider pricing and placement to be if not marketing? Selling in Whole Foods is the same as selling in Walmart? It's the same type of consumers that shop around those places? A 1000$ smartphone vs 299$ one are targeted at the same people? Or price is just an arbitrary number given a cost and a random profit margin? My point still stands, that "nerds" are influenced in their purchase decisions just like anyone else despite using adblockers. The "Marketing Mix" was first approached in the 60's, it's not something I made up along the way to try to prove something. It's a whole discipline for some reason.

Jensson 5y ago
Pricing and placement are distribution, not marketing. Distribution strategies matters for marketing, but distribution isn't marketing. Marketing requires all of the 4 p's, if you lack the last one it isn't marketing. Marketing might give feedback on the other 3 p's, but they don't control them. Example of product launch without marketing: A product manager have an idea of a product that doesn't exist yet. Engineering developers the product. The manager decides the price based on what they need to deliver the product and tacks on some extra. They determine to distribute via the Android and Apple app stores, so launches the products there. Marketing is what happens after all of those decisions has been made. Marketing might have feedback that they should also release a web version, or that they might be able to increase the price, but that isn't the main function of marketing.
- libertine 5y ago
  I don't understand the point that you're trying to make, like I never said that marketing owns everything and everyone bows down to marketing. That makes no sense. It's a discipline just like every other. Most decisions go through many departments, each with their own arguments, each more important than others. Who gets the final call on pricing? Most likely financial dept. and any other price changes will come out of marketing budget. Plus it differs from organization to organization. FMCGs, auto, media, all of them have different structures and relationships between these departments, each with different weights. You gave me an example of people launching a product without a marketing department, nothing else. You know what? It's the product manager that will give support to customers, and that doesn't mean they aren't doing customer support. I can give you a real example: There was an American company called Hasbro that in the 80's bought the rights to sell some Japanese toy, made in japan, rebranded to Transformers and the marketing guys decided to launch an animated series to try to help with sales by giving a background story to the toys. I think it was an advertising agency that wrote the scripts but I'm not sure. So yeah... Transformers, one of the most popular media franchises, was literally content marketing to sell rebranded japanese toys. So, no product development, no engineers, etc, an example without any of that.
- the_af 5y ago
  > Pricing and placement are distribution, not marketing. Pricing and placement are very much marketing. Even where to place products on shelves is a form of marketing (e.g. whether to place them near the cash register or near other products, etc.) There are analytics done on which products people pick when they are placed next to other products. Even when you think your purchase decisions aren't influenced by marketing, they are. As for pricing: there are people whose job it is to find the best way to price products in order to "sell" the idea these are budget items or luxury items, etc. It is well known that pricing some things lower than a threshold is a bad strategy because people expect them to be higher priced. There's also the strategy of "anchoring" prices. All of these are examples of marketing, and there are many more.
foxfluff 5y ago
> What would you consider pricing and placement to be if not marketing? I'm ok with calling it marketing (I don't particularly care). It's just that I don't believe we can have fruitful discussion without first defining and scoping the terms enough that people don't constantly shift goalposts and talk past each other. This kind of thing just leads to very frustrating "discussion" where no matter what you say, someone is going to interject because they have a different idea of what the discussion is all about. Now the submission unfortunately doesn't define what it means by marketing, but I don't think it's talking about pricing or the decision where you sell a product. Kinda have to read between the lines, but it's probably talking about promotional content about the product. Definitely not pricing or the location where you choose to make a product available for purchase. My reading is that "the language and content traditionally used in promotional materials about a product do not appeal to nerds." It's probably off but not too far off. The author just didn't find the right words to say what they mean (or assumed the reader can infer), and instead said "marketing." Even with that interpretation, it wouldn't make for a very fruitful discussion, but at least it'd be a whole lot better than having someone explain why they don't think a typical startup landing page persuades them only to be argued against because "no, actually selling cookies at your local grocery store affects you!" I'm paraphrasing of course but I've seen the same discussion here over and over again. It's predictably silly. > My point still stands, that "nerds" are influenced in their purchase decisions just like anyone else despite using adblockers. Sure. I don't think the article is about that and I don't see what's the point of going down the "everything affects everything" line of reasoning in comments. That doesn't really say anything new, useful, actionable, or interesting.
- libertine 5y ago
  >Now the submission unfortunately doesn't define what it means by marketing, but I don't think it's talking about pricing or the decision where you sell a product. Kinda have to read between the lines, but it's probably talking about promotional content about the product. Definitely not pricing or the location where you choose to make a product available for purchase. Well I was replying to a user that said he was not significantly affected by marketing, because he does things like sorting products by "cheapest" and reads the product ingredients. I simply said that those decisions are made purposefully and are not random. It's a way to position products. A product it's cheap because it was designed that way. It won't lose value over time dropping the price tiers until it reaches the price with almost 0% margin, rendering it into a great deal that simply followed some natural event of dropping price while retaining it's value. About the main article I simply said that we should be aware that "promotional content" is everywhere, and relying on the illusion that "the marketing never catch me, I use adblockers" is just that, an illusion. That probably won't even make them wonder they are actually being promoted to. Flagging content as promotion is the exception, not the rule.