
Is marketing evil? - bdfh42
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/02/is-marketing-evil.html
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mdasen
Great article, but the problem that I have with marketing is that it can blur
what would otherwise be a more logical situation. It isn't that marketing can
be used for good or evil, but that marketing makes it hard to distinguish
between the two. Good marketing of a good product will often look the same as
good marketing of a bad product. Take Enzyte as an example. Their ads are
slick and have the polish and convincing ability of ads for good products.
Yet, they're selling nothing real. In fact, the company's owner was convicted
of 93 counts of conspiracy, fraud and money laundering connected to Enzyte.

And this is a $500M company! It's not like they had small sales to a few
gullible individuals. People saw the ads, they were professional, had the same
look/feel as legit ads and bought into it based on the image. Marketing
obscures our ability to differentiate between good and bad. It's not that
people are convincing us to do bad things, it's that they're impairing our
ability to figure out what is good and bad. That's what makes marketing evil.
Whether we end up making a good decision or not becomes more random than
without marketing because we are less able to differentiate.

Conning people into doing something good is still conning them into doing it.
Wouldn't it be better for people to make decisions based off of evidence than
marketing?

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josefresco
Nothing evil about Enzyte that I can see. Unless they weren't sending people
their weener pills or processing refunds.

The real evil is when marketing is done without our direct knowledge. Product
placement, marketing to kids/toddlers, preferential media treatment, sponsored
'research' etc.

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10ren
He means "advertising".

If we define marketing as doing something that _people want_ , it's harder for
it to be evil.

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thras
The Devil speaking in the 1967 film Bedazzled: "There was a time when I used
to get lots of ideas... I thought up the Seven Deadly Sins in one afternoon.
The only thing I've come up with recently is advertising."

