Yep. I have a low opinion of anyone who tries to manipulate others using deceit and trickery. Marketers just happen to have made a career out of it.
The irony here is that this 'article' is just an ad for this guy's consulting services.
Sales is necessary to every organisation however. There is no "built it and they will come".
Marketing in my mind should be about providing easy access to the right information so that human beings can make informed decisions. Sometimes you have to "push" that information or your message to the people you want to reach. Not everyone will magically find your wisdom.
Awareness, (increasing) interest and desire:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purchase_funnel
Smoking dates back millennia:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_smoking
It is was just more productized in the (mid-)1900s, just like everything else was.
So, none of those commercials teach you what smoking is actually about. It is about getting you addicted so you become an ATM for big tabacco.
Not in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s.
The Marlboro Man first appeared in 1954:
If you mean that in 1954 nobody knew about the effects of smoking, you are wrong. The cigarette industry was well aware of it:
But to say that all marketing is ill-intended and manipulative seems way to extreme.
"Providing good documentation" could be considered a marketing move, if that was what would set a product apart, and make it interesting to buyers.
Making bad ad-copy and intrusive advertising in general is not something I find very interesting personally. That doesn't mean, that it doesn't work, or isn't morally wrong (you mention smoking).
Selling and promoting your product is necessary for most companies. And it can be done in a tasteful, informative and non-intrusive manner.
> Anyone who tries to manipulate anyone in any matter is a fool.
and provided a counter example. Of course, commercials don't have to be malicious, and can be informative and a net positive. But commercials rarely are honest sources of information.
I dislike being sold to, but I enjoy getting info for products that are relevant to me.
What I see lots of advertisers doing is treating it as a competitive game. They're slightly right, as they are competing against the other advertisers for the same customers. However, if all advertisers could just agree to be brutally honest, everyone would be better off. That's the purpose of governmental regulation, and governments routinely strike companies for deceptive advertising.
To be blunt, any advertising that does not make a good-faith effort to give me all the relevant information--the good and the bad--is deceptive. Perhaps you won't get in legal trouble (though you should), and perhaps it's socially acceptable because "everyone else does it" (not everyone, just the vast majority), but that does not make it right. It just means society still has progress to make.
I'm a software engineer of 24 years. Maybe there's some synergy here.
Feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn (in my profile).
Why is this bad? What is the preferable way one should advertise their services, if they choose to be an independent consultant? Should they sit quietly in a dark room and wait for people to find them, like some sort of monk in a cave?
Is that more ironic than you commenting on what is ultimately just an ad for a VC accelerator?
However I despise deceitful marketing as well. I am also not a big fan of the way my company markets itself. It is neither deceitful nor misleading, but just ... irrelevant to people working in the space and thus hard to align with.
But I also know companies (that we have worked with) who spend their marketing budget on hosting small-ish conferences and choose to post content from their (technical) blog in their LinkedIn. For me personally, that way of marketing themselves just inspires more confidence than ... overconfident salespeople.
the same way cars brought the end of many professions. If there were no advertising we would all still have jobs and they would be much better too
If that is all advertising was, I don't believe this conversation would be happening. People (ITT) dislike advertising because of the other parts (tracking, subtle manipulation, etc). There's a side to it that has obvious benefit: Knowing you reach your target market with truthful and engaging content is something ad targeting, seo, etc, enable. The problem is they also enable deceit, manipulation, spam, etc. When I see the impact that has on people I know, I start to wonder if maybe it is worth throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
It is literally impossible to do anything without ads. You go to the store and it says peaches on a can of peaches. That’s an ad.