Marketing, Market-ing, the repertoire of skills, methods and ways to market your product, and doing it in the best possible fashion. But really, what is Marketing if you had to describe it in one word?
Advertisement. At least that’s what it boils down to in my mind if I were to explain it in one word, and I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one making this word association. Of course, Marketing is much more than just advertisement, but for the sake of this post we will focus on advertisement and its ethical ramifications.
When were you last exposed to an advertisement? A minute ago, an hour ago, more? If you answered the latter, it’s most likely because your brain didn’t even bother to notice it was exposed to marketing, and hence you having no recollection of it happening. Which brings me to my first point. Advertisement is ubiquitous. In fact, ads are so present that “the obvious thing to do is just ignore stuff” (Seth Godin, 2007). Which, not so surprisingly, ties very closely to the increasing indifference of individuals towards their peers. I’m not saying advertisement creates egotists, but this defensive mechanism we develop against ads, does incite us to individualistic behavior. It’s not a bad thing, but it certainly is a sad thing, that due to audio-visual “pollution” we have a tendency to ignore “stuff”, perhaps more than we care to.
If I haven’t made a clear case for the somewhat askew ethical nature of Marketing, then perhaps this second point will help tip the scale. I looked up the term Propaganda on Wikipedia and came across this preamble:
Propaganda is […] aimed towards influencing the attitude of the community […] by presenting only one side of an argument. […] Propaganda is usually repeated and dispersed over a wide variety of media in order to create the chosen result in audience attitudes.
How far is the above statement from describing Advertising, besides from the fact that Propaganda applies to a country and Advertising applies to a firm? I guess all I’m saying is that if Propaganda is perceived as unethical, then it’s only fair to raise a question mark about its close cousin Marketing.