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Good point. This is the sort of thing that should make us all go a bit deeper on this: Perhaps it is marketing that is fundamentally evil. Why should we be ac

by jrm4 4y ago

Good point. This is the sort of thing that should make us all go a bit deeper on this: Perhaps it is marketing that is fundamentally evil. Why should we be accepting of an entire industry dedicated solely to trying to convince people to buy things they literally do not need?

kqr 4y ago
Someone in marketing would tell you that they aren't trying to convince people to buy things they don't need (that's an expensive way to pay for customers to abandon your product, generally) but that they are helping people understand that the problem they've had for a long time is solved by a product.
- pseudo0 4y ago
  Unfortunately step one of that process is often convincing people that they have a problem, sometimes through questionable methods. It's easy to make a teenaged girl feel like her appearance is a problem when the basis for comparison is a photoshopped Instagram model, for example. Inducing demand for a product like that does not seem very beneficial for society.
Thorrez 4y ago
Cigarettes harm people. Is that the case for most products? Certainly not to the same degree, but I wonder to what degree buying different types of products helps vs harms people. What we truly need to live is very little. What we want tends to be much more. Jesus said that it's easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. To what degree is our materialistic society harming us?
Gustomaximus 4y ago
People do needs things. And people do want choice and information. Marketing is no more evil than programming or any role. All roles have people use it detrimentally and unethically. I'm a marketer and only once felt less ethical in my role (pushing credit cards for a bank group) but most of the time is good work, promoting decent products to people as an alternate to the popular choice, which in itself drives competition and product improvement. While I would personally love to see better ad regulation in the world to do thinks like reduce billboards and tracking etc I still think it clear the world would be a worse place if companies were not allowed to promote their product.
- _aavaa_ 4y ago
  I agree that companies must have the legal right to provide potential customers with information about their products. But essentially every advertisement I’ve ever seen is so far removed from “providing information” that characterizing them as such is a joke. What they provide is a made up story of how good your life will be with this product (it bad it will be without it). That isn’t providing information, it’s manipulating people.
  - Gustomaximus 4y ago
    > But essentially every advertisement I’ve ever seen is so far removed from “providing information” that characterizing them as such is a joke. I would say this is more what you notice. A huge amount of advertising is about brand awareness. Logos on sports teams etc Awareness is often not telling people anything, only trying to become part of someone's consideration set when they price compare 3 car insurances type thing. Or much of the comparison sites are paid ads essentially but they do it in a way that provides good information. Or if you watch Marques Brownlee type youtubers, a bunch of what they do is an ad but their brand is to give honest opinions while paid. Or how many ads simply show a product and a price type display? Absolutely some ads are manipulating, but I suspect if you consciously look around you'll see many if not most are not manipulating, and your conscious brain seems to remember the ones you dislike hence to view it is the vast majority. Anyway feel free to hate marketing :) I would really like to see less outdoor ads and better regulation in general but at the risk of being a bit specific to your wording I felt I needed to show another side to that view.
- jrm4 4y ago
  You're putting up a bit of a strawman, early. I didn't say it "should be banned," at least not yet. It is possible for something to be evil -- or let's put it lighter -- a net negative, and still one could see that trying to ban it is a bad thing. Let's try it this way: Does "marketing," as a paid business practice, cause more harm than good? (NGL, when someone argues that their thing isn't evil by arguing e.g. "any practice can be good or evil" and not a direct and clear explanation of why their thing is good, big red flags.)
bfuller 4y ago
Marketing does cause numerous harms, but there is a great argument to be made that marketing to children specifically is inherently unethical.

by jrm4 4y ago

kqr 4y ago

Someone in marketing would tell you that they aren't trying to convince people to buy things they don't need (that's an expensive way to pay for customers to abandon your product, generally) but that they are helping people understand that the problem they've had for a long time is solved by a product.

pseudo0 4y ago
Unfortunately step one of that process is often convincing people that they have a problem, sometimes through questionable methods. It's easy to make a teenaged girl feel like her appearance is a problem when the basis for comparison is a photoshopped Instagram model, for example. Inducing demand for a product like that does not seem very beneficial for society.

Thorrez 4y ago

Cigarettes harm people. Is that the case for most products? Certainly not to the same degree, but I wonder to what degree buying different types of products helps vs harms people. What we truly need to live is very little. What we want tends to be much more. Jesus said that it's easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. To what degree is our materialistic society harming us?

Gustomaximus 4y ago

People do needs things. And people do want choice and information. Marketing is no more evil than programming or any role. All roles have people use it detrimentally and unethically. I'm a marketer and only once felt less ethical in my role (pushing credit cards for a bank group) but most of the time is good work, promoting decent products to people as an alternate to the popular choice, which in itself drives competition and product improvement. While I would personally love to see better ad regulation in the world to do thinks like reduce billboards and tracking etc I still think it clear the world would be a worse place if companies were not allowed to promote their product.

_aavaa_ 4y ago
I agree that companies must have the legal right to provide potential customers with information about their products. But essentially every advertisement I’ve ever seen is so far removed from “providing information” that characterizing them as such is a joke. What they provide is a made up story of how good your life will be with this product (it bad it will be without it). That isn’t providing information, it’s manipulating people.
- Gustomaximus 4y ago
  > But essentially every advertisement I’ve ever seen is so far removed from “providing information” that characterizing them as such is a joke. I would say this is more what you notice. A huge amount of advertising is about brand awareness. Logos on sports teams etc Awareness is often not telling people anything, only trying to become part of someone's consideration set when they price compare 3 car insurances type thing. Or much of the comparison sites are paid ads essentially but they do it in a way that provides good information. Or if you watch Marques Brownlee type youtubers, a bunch of what they do is an ad but their brand is to give honest opinions while paid. Or how many ads simply show a product and a price type display? Absolutely some ads are manipulating, but I suspect if you consciously look around you'll see many if not most are not manipulating, and your conscious brain seems to remember the ones you dislike hence to view it is the vast majority. Anyway feel free to hate marketing :) I would really like to see less outdoor ads and better regulation in general but at the risk of being a bit specific to your wording I felt I needed to show another side to that view.
jrm4 4y ago
You're putting up a bit of a strawman, early. I didn't say it "should be banned," at least not yet. It is possible for something to be evil -- or let's put it lighter -- a net negative, and still one could see that trying to ban it is a bad thing. Let's try it this way: Does "marketing," as a paid business practice, cause more harm than good? (NGL, when someone argues that their thing isn't evil by arguing e.g. "any practice can be good or evil" and not a direct and clear explanation of why their thing is good, big red flags.)

bfuller 4y ago

Marketing does cause numerous harms, but there is a great argument to be made that marketing to children specifically is inherently unethical.