The main issue I have with capital M Marketing is that it is very much about creating demand ex nihilo, not matching with already existing demand.
I often think of [former French media CEO] Le Lay's 2004 take on the role of media w.r.t. advertisement: it's about selling "available human brain time."
Marketing is about filling that void and entice consumption. And it rings so much truer nowadays with social media.
For some religions, and a number of athiests, instead of a little devil on your shoulder, it's a tiny marketing person, telling you you're not good enough, you're not safe enough, you're not happy enough.
Opposite the marketing person in the black suit is a marketing person in a white suit telling you that all you've got to do to be good enough, safe enough, and happy enough is to drink the Koolaid[0] and kiss Hank's ass[1].
If you work in pure marketing (like an ad agency) you also don't generally get to pick what it is you're selling. You pitch to everyone and sell services to the highest bidder. Sometimes you get lucky but most of the time you don't.
> If you work in pure marketing (like an ad agency) you also don't generally get to pick what it is you're selling.
They're mercenaries, and mercenaries have a choice. "Oh no my boss said I have to advertise these cigarettes and I don't have a choice because... I work for this agency" Just walk out of the office and go find an honest job.
A conscripted soldier might be said to have no choice, but mercenaries do. Marketers do. They chose the money.
> They're mercenaries, and mercenaries have a choice
Really? Do you consider yourself a soldier of fortune on the basis of what you do for work?
If marketers are mercenaries, what does that make Google and Facebook, who wouldn't even exist without their money-spinning ad products? The Axis of Evil?
There is no way to meaningfully separate latent demand from induced demand. It's a distinction without a difference. Many customers don't even know what they want until marketing shows them what's available.
If capitalism stopped at "let's just meet existing demand and nothing more", we wouldn't have had the Industrial Revolution.
Also, how do you differentiate between "organic demand" vs inorganic (i.e. coerced from prior marketing efforts) when estimating what "already existing demand" is?
I often think of [former French media CEO] Le Lay's 2004 take on the role of media w.r.t. advertisement: it's about selling "available human brain time."
Marketing is about filling that void and entice consumption. And it rings so much truer nowadays with social media.