Marketing Can Be Shameless, and the Products It Promotes Can Be Harmful
I’ve been chatting with an old friend who, like me, had a long career in marketing; she became a VP at Grey Advertising. She told me about her experience at a practice round for the PGA Championship (that starts today at Baltusrol in New Jersey).
She writes: The event producers decided to close down the entry nearest to the clubhouse, so that the “walk” to get to the clubhouse (or near the leaderboard and the historic 4th hole and 17th/ 18th hole convergence) was CLEARLY designed for marketing purposes…meaning EVERY AND ANY money grubbing divergence along an approximately four-mile walk (imagine the aged and elder golf enthusiasts’ travails). Horrifying. I intend to post vociferously on PGA’s website the shamelessness of this event, contrasted to the supreme tourney of all, The Masters.
I responded:
You and I see essentially the same thing. I had a wonderful career getting people to want to buy B2B products: mostly IT and communications hardware and services, but also a range of everything else under the sun in the B2B space: industrial products of all possible description. But even then I saw how creating demand for “stuff” really doesn’t make the world a better place–and, as we’re seeing now, is resulting in the mass meltdown of our environment, and the exploitation of many of the people in the supply chain. Have you come across Annie Leonard and the “Story of Stuff?”
Here’s a good example: When Philips Electronics wanted to launch its LCD projectors in the U.S., they hired us to generate demand—which we did in spades (20K qualified sales leads the first year). At the time there were no fewer than 36 competitors; Philips became the 37th. Our client gained market share, and was very happy with our work, but …. is the world a better place because Philips took some business away from Texas Instruments, Sony, Panasonic and 33 others? Not really.
Of course, in the B2C space we have actual harm being inflicted. Consider fast food, clothes made with child/slave labor, pharmaceuticals specifically not meant to cure disease, but only to hook the patient into a lifetime addiction of addressing the symptoms. We also have credit cards designed to entice and then rip off low-end customers, health insurance plans crafted to fleece healthy customers while denying care to sick ones, and cars and appliances made to fall apart.
This all leads up to my favorite, the fossil fuel boys, who knew 35 years ago that their business model (extracting the last molecule of petroleum out of the ground and burning it) would cause catastrophic climate change, not to mention ocean acidification, loss of biodiversity, profound lung damage, etc. Here you have obscenely wealthy people trying to multiply their net worth by knowingly and calculatingly destroying our planet. I often write, “If you don’t call that evil, it’s hard to know what you could possibly be reserving that word to describe.”
Not to sound self-righteous, but this is what I love about my career today. I only take on clients whose products improve the quality of environment and the living things that reside in it. Now I’m telling the story of renewable energy, and all the peripheral technologies: smart grid, electric transportation, energy storage, sustainable ag, etc. I’m not making the money I was in the old days, but I feel a rich sense of reward.
@ Craig
Love the story and you pointed out the many conflicts that business growth and the altar of growth for stock returns creates tremendous level of Un sustainable and in many cases cruel employment practices globally. Glad you address that too.
No youdont sound self righteous , I will take a stab and hope I dont either.
I sold products to get thru college and allowed my mentors to steer me into a business career which led to eternal conflict through out my career.
After working 8 plus years at a Electric Utility and cutting my teeth on BTU’s I learned that the profit motive in energy led to bad policy and bad consequences. Saw the conflict coming over Global Warming in early 1980’s .
So I made peace with my values by following a continued career in promoting efficiency, solar, and environmental services even though I would have made much more money and much less effort.
Throughout 38 years when I did have to migrate to another job when I was looking I would almost get hired by lets say consumer mainstream co’s but I had no Passion for this So I would pass on the offers.
I was committed to trying to collaborate with others to make a difference and resolve problems and found great comfort with other like minded Souls I have had the Great Blessings to have broken and shared friendship with over the years.
Most of us earned less than we could have but our Conscious’s were clear. We built markets\, created change, reduced CO 2 and now things we Pioneered with serious Missionary work are Mainstreaming.
So we find some solace in that. Sold good Solutions not just another electronic gadget of nebulous value and sickening Hype! It shaped our world view as well and made most of us more disdainful of the hyper consumerist addictions of our society and other cultures. US exports this consumer culture its a real industry too.!
Good on you to have taken the Path to sustainability so the collateral damages did not get you.
So much of the main stream is meaningless when one can back off and step outside of iut. It is Liberating as well on a personal level.
You keep on trucking …tell your PGA friend that one of your comm-enters would take golf courses and reduce them and re-purpose them to Grow Food gardens in the cities. Make them Community Gardens and this would improve social and health conditions for many. Repurpose Water to a Higher Purpose.
The Millennials and the ones right before them don’t seem to have the Passion for the golf culture. so these things may come to pass in coming years , Higher ground for All! .
One last parting shot, I can honestly state that My sales volume was in the upper ranks in all my positions. Guess What I don’t Play golf ! so it can be Done Golf is not a requirement for success !
Its ok for those who play it May they have fun 1
Cool stuff, and thanks for the kind words.
Marketing has also had a profound effect on politics. It may have been as early as the 60’s or 70’s when political campaigns began to hire marketing consultants and began treating government like it was a B2B and B2C situation.
We now have one party that has so fully embraced marketing models that they can in all sincerity say that what is “fact” is based upon what people “believe is true.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnhJWusyj4I
This may be fine for determining motivation and trends that are based upon popular opinion. It is probably less helpful in charting a course of action for global warming. But it is perhaps this distinction which has given us much of the strife that we can observe in modern, at least American, Society.