Hacking Is the Opposite of Marketing
macwright.com
macwright.com
Exactly this. I'm Chinese but I didn't look into Chinese cooking until recently, and here's the thing: You can cook hundreds of different Chinese cuisine, and eat them perfectly with several simple tools. It's an example of one-size-fits-all that actually works, and works really well.
Everything will be sliced and chopped with a single cleaver, from home cook to professional food carving. Wok for most of the things, from deep/stir/pan-frying, to boiling and steaming (with a small rack). Everybody knows how to coat them and make them practically non-stick. And of course the obligated chopsticks for most of the things. . What about soup? Just pick up the bowl to drink. Not like most one-size-fits-all solutions, they are not clunky at all and I rarely wanted to reach for more tools.
Funnily though, the gadget culture/marketing/consumerism didn't stop in China. A lot of families, like mine, for example, are still convinced to buy a lot of kitchen gadgets even though most of them are never used twice.
I've certainly fallen into a trap of working with and making things nobody else sincerely cares about (security), which is why I make a living, but also the ceiling on how successful I've been at it. Security tools are also a unique flavour of marketing problem because they are governance and remdedial mechanisms, which means they aren't individually desirable, and they are mostly for mediating and managing others. You have to get positioned between the user and an antagonist. Security for everyone means security for no one, but security for yacht owners, that's a product. I'm marvelling at how few words the OP was able to express this in. It's as good as YC's "make something people want."
Security products are bit like machine medicine, where you don't cure illness, you make a business of managing it. I'd suspect there is a direct 1:1 analogy between pharmaceutical marketing and security marketing problems. So much to think about.
A Portal to Infinity https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TO6Luilc4Bo
Heh. He hooked me with the bicameral mind cite. Watching now.
~~Sounds interesting. Link? Sorry, my search-fu is weak.~~
It has been disappointing for me that lots of people who call themselves hackers (like amateur Capture-The-Flag players or security people) are doing something rather basic for Theoretical Computer Science. Go to a security conference you will find tons of them.
Real hackers are 1% of security professionals and hardcore mathematicians, writers, physicists — look at Richard Feynman. Compexity theorists, for example, literally touch the essence of what computation is.
EDIT: expanded abbreviations
doesn't it work like that with everything?
Anything that has logic gates in it can be used to build out complex programs. Since Conways Game of Life allows for logic gates, you can build anything you want, albeit with a lot more processing power needed since it's built on an abstraction. You can even build Conways Game of Life with Conways Game of Life, like a sort of fractal program / quine.
Sure, there's a difference between creative thinking and doing something that somebody gave you the direct inspiration for. So what? By definition, you can't build a product for off-label reasons. If you knew what the off-label reasons were, then you could market them and put them on the label. Off-label uses basically just happen or they don't, and it's not really the purview of the product builder to try and force it to happen.
Saying hacking is the opposite of marketing is like saying lounge chairs are the opposite of camels. Neither makes the least bit of sense.
Who do you want - your buddy that can pull your teeth out with a pair of rusty pliers (wow, hacking!!!) or a board certified dentist that specializes in orthodontics, or surgery using specialized tools?
Nobody ever said McGuivering is bad, mind you. Who has never used a penny for a screwdriver? But who the f wants to do that for everything? Who wants to create their own custom operating system that will take 18 months to create before you can even use a computer, which of course, you make from plywood, horseshoes, and and the blood of 13 virgins. Create your own hacked toaster, chairs, microwave oven, electric automobile...who the hell has time to hack everything that they need in life.
But back to marketing. All what marketing means is to let people know, by any way that works, is that you have a thing that can help other people. As they say, what good is creating a cure for cancer in your basement, and never tell a single soul about it? That's just dumb. You think that people will know by magic? I mean, even word-of-mouth is marketing. Everything is marketing, if it means letting people know. Posters, flyers, emails, cold calling, tv ads, radio ads, giving seminars/webinars, web sites - everything is marketing that let's people know that you have something that can be useful for them. Even supermarkets and department stores are actually marketing - people go to them not to buy things, but to see what is available, what choices are available, and THEN buy what they need. Stores are pure marketing, that's their primary purpose, and then, after you see what they got on their shelves, THEN you make the purchase. Sure, some people may buy things without looking and reading and looking at all the alternatives, but that's only because they already did it in the past.
What is this? The 1890s?
Marketing has regressed far from “letting people know”, through and beyond psychological manipulation into a world where truth and reality literally does not matter as long you market it correctly to each demographic.
Companies with 30 or 100 people don't have 10 statisticians on staff, backed up by 20 behavioral psychologists, in order to do what you are saying.
Does Facebook and Google and Fortune 500 have all these resources? Sure. Undoubtably. But I've talked to thousands of business owners this year, and, trust me, this is definitely not the case.
And to repeat, this is with thousands of business owners I've talked to this year alone. Have you personally talked to this many this year? How about the last 10 years? How many business owners have you talked to, personally? Trust me, most companies that are not in the Fortune 1000 don't do this. There are over 31.7 million small businesses in the United States, according to March 2021 data released by the SBA. 90% of businesses in the U.S. are small, with less than 20 employees. Only 10% of all businesses in the U.S. employ more than 100 people.
Luckily for those small businesses without statisticians or behavioral psychologists, it’s trivial to buy marketing services from a multitude of specialized providers, all the way from traditional ad companies, through guerilla marketing, social media spam and black hat seo, to more nefarious shit like cambridge analytica.
If you own a restaurant, and all other restaurants of your caliber are charging $8 for a hamburger, you're not going to be able to charge $5,289 for a hamburger.
There's a wide range of options, too. I buy pens at the dollar store - $1 for 12 pens. The Fulgor Nocturnus pen by Tibaldi was sold for $8,000,000. What, you think their marketing is going to make me buy it? I was going to the store to buy a pen for 8.3 cents, but heard an ad on the radio for the Fulgor Nocturnus for 10% off for $7.2 million and just was instantly mind-controlled and spend the money?
Ridiculous.
You just have this pre-conceived notion of what marketing actually is.
And tell me...if you have something to sell, like a bike or you went into the bagel business and wanted to sell bagels, how exactly would you do it without marketing? Tell me, I want to know. Just sit in your basement with 50,000 bagels and wait for people to magically walk in the door?
If you want a new job, you have to market yourself. Your resume is your marketing collateral. There's also other ways to market yourself - by public speaking, or by public writing, for example. I don't know, maybe you think that when you go to get a job, you don't want people to overpay you, so you just automatically say you'll work for $7.25 per hour, the federal minimum wage. Can't overcharge yourself, better make the minimum wage. Me, I'll try to get maximum salary.
Silly.
If I want to market something, I’m doing it because I want to sell it at maximal cost, whether its a bike or bagel. That too isn’t a rebuttal to what I said.
Basically your entire post is justifications for marketing that don’t actually rebut what I said, because you are somehow deeply tied to marketing and feel the need to defend it and somehow justify it for any reason.
Marketing is getting people to overpay for things they don’t need.
With or without marketing, people are going to buy what they don't need. That is 100% above what they should be paying, once you are past the bare necessities. We should all have only the bare necessities in life. That's all. But in first world countries, and even in 3rd world, all except for the very, very most poverty stricken company, people look for more than their needs, and to their wants. This has nothing to do with marketing. If you completely took marketing out of the equation, this is still what people would do.
I'm sure even in the caveman times, there were some people that wanted a better bearskin coat than all the others in the tribe, and would go out and kill the best bear, even though he had a perfectly fine bearskin coat. Or more likely, he would get the best bearskin coat in order to give it to the hot little cavewoman he has his eye on.
>If I want to market something, I’m doing it because I want to sell it at maximal cost,
I don't know, the way you phrase this sounds like you don't have much business knowledge. You don't want to sell it at the maximum cost, you want to sell it at the maximum price. Cost is what one says from the consumer side - "It cost me $500." But from the seller's side, you want to maximize revenue. You don't want to maximize cost, you want to minimize cost and maximize the sales price.
Sure, I understood what you are trying to say but it took me a re-read, because that is not what someone who owned a business would say.
But what you said is silly. There are companies that sell pens for $2 million, those that sell the for $500, those that sell them for $80, and those that sell them for 1 cent. And there are many brands to choose from. My dad is a Parker pen guy, I'm a Cross pen person. The consumer has the choice between all kinds of brands and pricing.
The business as a whole should not want to maximize the pricing, or the cost, but instead, they should want to maximize profits.
But what it really comes down to is you are being too simplistic. I'm not going to "rebut" you because your assertion is just too uneducated.
An important purpose of marketing is to get people to buy from their company, rather than their competitor. That's the biggest challenge, not to get people to overpay for things that they don't need. And why? Because the people working there, people like you and me, need money to pay for rent, to pay for food, to pay for healthcare, to pay for tuition.
That is my company's biggest challenge. To get people to buy from me and not someone else. There are hundreds of companies that charge as much as me. There are thousands that charge less than me. There are those that charge way more. And everyone we talk to, they know it. We have turned people down because they can't afford what I have, or are not a good fit for my company. There's no pulling the wool over their eyes. We literally have people telling us that they get 4 or 5 people calling them every day for the exact same thing.
We all need to buy or acquire things in life that we need in order to live. Companies need profits. The average profit of the S&P 100 is about 10%. How can my company be heard? One has to let people know somehow.
And again, I am not here to "rebut" you, I am here to educate you. What you say is like me saying that the purpose of a mobile phone is to use it as a flashlight, because that's all that I use it for. And you try to tell me that the mobile phones are used for all kinds of other purposes, and I say you're not rebutting me that the main purpose of phones is that they are used for flashlights when you are looking for something in your car, or trying to put your key in the keyhole in your car door. It's ridiculous.
But answer me this - do you, or have you, ever owned your own business?
The author confuses marketing messages with marketing, which is the act of creating those messages in the first place.
That marketing messages that are specific are more effective than generic ones is a decent rule of thumb, although by no means universal either.
Marketing usually encourage you to be a consumer instead of a maker, unless they are selling something like 3-d printers or other stuff for makers.
I'm paraphrasing because he's put out so much material and restated his position so many times.
We have culture, a shared set of wordviews. Marketing is engaging with culture, purposefully trying to change it.
In effect homesteading a bit of culture.
A buffer-overflow is a hack, but so was markdown at first.
Marketing is not sales, it is not copywriting, it is not setting a motto. This comes at the end when everything is known about a market. They are executive decisions that could be done by the marketing department, or not.
Most of the time small and medium company owners contact copywriters directly for example.
Of course, it depends on what definitions one uses.
Here's what the AMA (American Marketing Association) says that marketing is:
"Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large."
Advertising is one form of marketing. Advertising, generally, is print, TV, mailing, banner ads on websites. Generally speaking.
Giving a talk at a trade show, writing and article for a newspaper or some kind of internet forum, cold calling, word-of-mouth, and all the rest - are not "advertising."
Or market research. That's marketing, but it's not advertising, that's for sure.
Competitive analysis. That's not advertising.
The study of markets is economics, I agree with that, but the study of markets also pertains to marketing, clearly. One does not cancel the other.
The problem is that so many people have emotional issues with marketing, not objective rational view of it. Basically, it ties into money, too - people also are irrational as hell when it comes to their own money. The two are related. Like, maybe people are pissed off at marketing, because they have problems with budgeting and holding onto their money, and buy anything that an advertisement throws in front of them. Poor self-discipline. So they blame marketing instead of themselves. I don't know, I'm not armchair psychiatrying here, but I think there's something deeper about marketing that really gets people emotionally riled up and hating it for no logical reason. I've read accounts (on reddit), where people go home and get on Amazon, and just go through and buy every single night until they run out of money for the month. Yeesh. That's a personal problem. It required a psychiatrist or therapist to solve for a person like that. Not being angry at marketing. I'm not directing this at any one person, or that it is the only reason. I'm just saying.
The study of markets to advertise better is still advertising, while the study of markets to understand markets is economics.
The reason people hate marketing is because they are professional liars, who claim they’re doing it your own good, like in the definition you provided, instead of ‘to make money’, which is the truth. That’s why they are hated and earn their hate.
I've never had any issue with marketing because I am very, very careful with my money and don't spend it unless I absolutely need it. Even then, I review all options - which company to purchase from, what are the alternatives, before I make a purchase. Shopping around has saved me so much money.
And yes, companies are marketing 'to make money.' Of course they are. Is trying to make money immoral? Is everyone supposed to work for free? How else are companies, made up of people trying to get a salary to pay their rent or mortgage, kids education, etc, supposed to make money? There's a lot of bitterness in your message, but what I'd like to hear is what you think the alternative is. I really want to know. How should companies proceed, in order to sell their products or services, so that their employees, like you yourself, can get paid?
As an example, when you, or anyone, try to get a job, the resume is an advertisement for your services. People respond to employment advertising. But what you are doing is marketing yourself. So are you and others including myself all professional liars, by your own definition? Or are we just an amateur liars?
But again, what do you think companies should do to let others know that they might have a solution for some people's problems? What should they do?
Is making money immoral? Not in and of itself. Is marketers pretending they’re doing marketing for everyone to benefit immoral? We’ll its certainly lying, and mostly to enrich themselves, so I’d say yes.
Again, marketing as an industry is largely unnecessary and immoral except to get people to spend money on things they wouldn’t otherwise spend. We would all be better off with less marketing in our lives and in front of our eyes.
If you ‘market yourself’ to get a job, you still aren’t a professional marketer doing marketing all the time. It’s the difference between someone who cooks at home and someone who cooks in a restaurant - you’re not really talking about the same thing even though you can try to muddy the waters and pretend its the same thing.
I don’t care what companies should do or not do to let others know what they want them to know - it doesn’t change the negative influence of marketing on society and people in general, and it doesn’t make marketing a positive for anyone but those making money from it.
That the association of marketers defines marketing as something good for everyone is lying. It’s good for them and their customers. That’s it. Everyone else knows it’s a lie, they just fall for the psychological tricks the marketers have developed since advertising is everywhere.
The way you use "marketers" to me seems incorrect. Most companies have a marketing department, so it's not really marketers, per se, it is corporations, and the CEO and CMO of the company that decide to do this. So really if you are saying that marketing is unnecessary and immoral, you are saying that just about every single company in the USA, and indeed the world, is by default, immoral. If that's your position, then that is your position. That is not a strawman or putting words in your mouth, that is just my abstracting what you said to a different level. If I'm wrong, let me know if that is not your position and why it doesn't hold true.
And all companies don't lie. I agree that some companies are scumbag companies, for sure. Like cigarette companies, who I would like every executive to rot in hell forever. But most companies aren't lying. Are they spinning things to present themselves in the best light? Sure. It's like going on a date with a beautiful woman or man. Are you going to present your best face, or are you going to tell them that you fart and sometimes you miss the toilet bowl when you piss and every horrible gross thing about yourself? No. Or, maybe you would, but then you would be the outlier 6 standard deviations out there. Every normal person would not do this, meaning the vast majority of people.
But I have had company salespersons who have flat out said that they cannot help me, that my needs don't match up with what they can do. They were not lying, they didn't get the commission or sale, and they were good with it. And of course, I've had salespeople lie to me. Both happened to me over the last week. Of course, I'm happy with the person who didn't lie, and not happy with the person who did, but I'm not losing sleep over it. It's the way it goes. As long as you do your due diligence, that's good enough, and if someone rips you off, at least you do your due diligence, so it's nothing to get upset about. But the point is, that I had many, many people who don't lie, and only very occasionally, rarely, even, those who do. This of course is anecdotal, but still, I think it is representative.
> Is marketers pretending they’re doing marketing for everyone to benefit immoral?
Well, this is absolutely not true, and if you take even one university marketing class, marketing 101, to any popular books written on the topic, they all universally disagree with this statement. The very first step in sales is to qualify/disqualify prospects. I look to disqualify people who are not a good fit, because who has the time? There are literally millions of customers for me, why even bother with someone who won't benefit? It doesn't even make sense.
>Again, marketing as an industry is largely unnecessary and immoral except to get people to spend money on things they wouldn’t otherwise spend.
I disagree. The purpose is to present and convince people, but the ultimate decision is in the hands of the purchaser, not the marketer. I understand that some people have no self-control and might be easily swayed, but those same people would probably be swayed to the same extent as if their friend asked them to help them rob a bank or something.
>We would all be better off with less marketing in our lives and in front of our eyes.
I don't disagree, but we all have that control in our lives. For example, I don't even own a television and don't watch it, for two reasons. One is that most of it is drival. Second is that I don't want to watch the commercials. Because I rarely buy things, extremely rare do I buy things, except for food. I have not been to a restaurant in at least 2 years. I purchased my used microwave from craigslist for $15, and only because I really needed one. Purchased my last (used) car for $4,000 in cash and it lasted me 17 years (averages out to $19/month, thank you very much) with no major repairs (thank you Toyota), and replaced it with another car that I bought for $5,400 in cash and expect it to last at least 10 years, and if I get to 15 or 20, yay.
My point is that I get the same advertisements shot at me as everyone else does, but I don't let it affect me. Maybe I'm an anomaly. But that is why I recommend everyone to go to reddit /r/frugal.
>If you ‘market yourself’ to get a job, you still aren’t a professional marketer doing marketing all the time. It’s the difference between someone who cooks at home and someone who cooks in a restaurant - you’re not really talking about the same thing even though you can try to muddy the waters and pretend its the same thing.
It's still marketing, though. I agree, not professionally, but it still is. It's the same with cooking. I disagree with you on this, and against your claim that I am trying to muddy the water.
>I don’t care what companies should do or not do to let others know what they want them to know
Well, just humor me, then. Because it does bother you, what is the solution? What do companies do to sell their products and services? What are your thoughts? Should a plumber not market their service? How would someone even find a plumber if their pipes broke and their house was being ruined because of water damage, and they lose their $700,000 home? There has to be advertising. People need plumbers. They need food. They need electrician. They need doctors. Advertising is not getting people to buy stuff they don't need. Society needs all of this.
> Everyone else knows it’s a lie, they just fall for the psychological tricks the marketers have developed since advertising is everywhere.
Again, you are talking about a small fraction of companies. In the USA, a company is considered a small business if it has under 500 employees which accounts for 99.7% of all businesses in the U.S.A. (about 30 million small businesses). I personally think 500 is pretty big to be counted as a small company, but look at how it further breaks down, according to the SBA: Firms with fewer than 100 employees account for 98.2%, and those with fewer than 20 employees account for 89%. I can guarantee you, firms with less than 100 employees, and for sure those with fewer then 20 employees, don't know their ass from a hole in the ground when it comes to marketing. This is from personal experience of calling over 100,000 small business owners over the years. So what you think in your head is just not true for the vast majority of companies out there. They don't hire a dozen marketers to exploit people, they just don't. They don't. Companies with less than 20 people don't even hire marketing companies that are on the level of Fortune 500 companies.
I know I won't convince you of anything, but that is my point of view, so at least you understand a different viewpoint, whether you agree or not.
Yes, poor marketing does this. That is, focuses on features. On the other hand, most people are more intereted in benefits. We are selfish. We are constantly asking, "What's in it for me?"
Features are typically product or market cenric. Benefits (e.g., save time) less so.
All that said, I don't really understand the benefit of comparing hacking to marketing. And I like to dabble in both.
Some research may have helped the author. They are literally incorrect (the author is talking about advertising, not marketing).
To say "Marketing is the opposite of Hacking" makes about as much sense as saying "the Orion constellation is the opposite of the planet Neptune". -- Not everything has an opposite or a reciprocal.
Also, just to be extra controversial, I am going to say:
Marketing is Hacking.
"The thing about making general tools is that marketing is harder and you need to build narratives about how the general thing is specifically useful"
I think the article strongly assumes an economy of abundance (like capitalism). In an economy of abundance, there's trouble selling stuff, so you need to convince people they need something. The article comes from the assumption no one wants the plain thing.
Clickbait title.
the purpose of advertising is convince you that you need to buy something whether or not it will actually cause you pleasure or make your life easier or happier in any way.
advertising is not marketing, but since marketing is responsible for creating these arguably false narratives, its not much of a stretch to say that:
hacking is truth - making a thing in the world that works in a new way
marketting is deception - making you believe something you wouldn't otherwise for the purpose of enriching someone else
What's the term for the action?