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I would consider what super-huge companies like Coca-Cola and GM do, to be outliers. Most companies aren't Coke or GM or whatever. Sure, some companies do unethical things, and I'll agree that things like "neuro-marketing" leave some interesting questions open. But I don't have any problem with marketing in the general sense.



I've always considered marketing by super-huge companies to be the majority of marketing. When you consider the number of brands owned by Yum!, GM, InBev, and the ones in the financial industry, that's a ton of marketing efforts done in an unethical way. I haven't seen numbers so my assumptions might be way off. Maybe it's different if you're considering the dollars spent vs the actual number of marketing pieces.

But it's not just super-huge companies. Listen to conservative talk radio and it's not long before you hear local ads using fear mongering, anger inciting, self loathing or inadequacy inducing marketing to sell whatever version of local or small time (when compared to super-huge conglomerates) snake oil they have.

Is this advertising? Is advertising separate from sales and marketing and is where most of the evil is introduced? If so it still doesn't give Yum! and the financial industry a pass for what they sell and how they sell it.




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