How do you feel about advertising?
How about solicitation?
Marketing?
Manipulation?
How are these things different – or the same?
In the capitalist market goods and services are bought and sold. I suppose there is some minimal necessity to make people aware of these goods and services and this is often referred to as advertising.
But at the base level it’s just sharing information to increase awareness.
And I think, at one time at least, these exchanges of information were more need-based.
For example. A farmer complains to his neighbor that he has caterpillars all over his soybeans. The neighbor says he has heard about a product available at the corner store that kills caterpillars.
Advertising.
We call this word-of-mouth, and it probably sustained the extent of whatever we want to call this thing for a long time.
Then, at some point in time later than that, people changed their business models from a ‘meet the people’s needs’ to a ‘let’s see how much money we can make’ mentality.
And that’s when the advertising->solicitation->marketing thing got real interesting.
At some point in time, and I often call it ‘the mad men’ era of the 1950s the desire to make more money became strong enough to start looking for new tools to help sell more goods and services.
Enter psychology.
And guerilla marketing.
And blatant trickery.
This is the stuff that really gets my goat.
I would ask, ‘why?’ but I already know. The incentive is capitalism and money. And probably power as it relates to money.
And maybe that’s all fine and well and good.
Except, for capitalism to work, the consumer has to have the power of choice. I argue that psychological manipulation and trickery has removed this element rendering the average consumer essentially helpless. And this, of course, allows the for-profit mindset to run absolutely rampant.
And guess what?
That’s where we are.
And now hula hoops have become anti-depressants.
Original post with links to full podcast audio and YouTube video is here: https://chrisburcher.com/2020/05/22/episode-5-marketing-and-solicitation/
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