In response to Seth Godin’s question:
Is marketing the art of tricking people into buying stuff they don?t need?
Or is it about spreading ideas that people fall in love with?
I love this question. The answer is both tricking people and spreading ideas: tricking people to fall in love with stuff they don’t need!
This is evident in our over-indulgent, entitled, society today with just about everything we possess. Cars, food, music, entertainment, clothing, jobs, etc. Each one is bigger, faster, larger, and more titillating, but none more necessary to function each day from 20 years ago.
I would even go so far as to say that the reason our society is more addicted, overweight, indebted, bankrupt, depressed, suicidal, and welfare dependent is due to irresponsible marketers during the past several decades.
We have forgotten how to think for ourselves and even how to evaluate a product/service when presented with an advertisement because shrewd marketers have told us for years that they have already researched it for us and have found it to be better, if not necessary, for us to obtain one.
As Hollywood has accomplished for many years, marketers are now selling the story that they aren’t responsible for the overspending on consumer credit cards. But, I’m not alone in receiving up to 5 credit card offers everyday. I’m not alone in being exposed to some 3000 images daily of branded products that marketers feel important for me to see.
Coming down from the Christmas rush, it seems appropriate to note how ridiculous this spending-spree has become over the years. Christmas provides whole businesses a chance to survive that may not otherwise simply because of the ever-growing need to buy stuff that we don’t need. Why is it that we feel the need to buy things for people? Because we’re told that it’s more convenient, it’s just what this person or that person wants, everyone else is doing it, and you’ll be the fool if you don’t as well.
It’s It’s no longer a time where parents can purchase a toy car for Bobby, a doll for Jane, and a book for Joey. Now Christmas consists of and IPod for Bobby with new $100 basketball shoes, a gift card for overpriced clothes at the Gap, to say nothing for the rest of the kids. This “need” to buy things is no doubt spurred on by irresponsible marketers who have succeeded at tricking people to fall in love with buying things they don’t need.
I’ll now relinquish my post on the soapbox. Thanks for listening.
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