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Is Marketing Lying?
I used to think that marketing was silly: a better mousetrap sells itself, surely? Of course, I used to think that about libertarianism as well.
As I grew, I came to realize that if nobody knows about your mousetrap, then you can hardly expect them to beat a path to your door. So you need to advertise.
This was still a pretty juvenile understanding, as I am sure you appreciate. After all, a great many successful things (whether mousetraps or religions) are sold not because they deliver a dead mouse or a ticket to heaven, but because the market is somehow tickled by the pitch. So marketing is not just about making noise: it is about finding a way to speak to your audience.
In general, this has been pretty hard for me to wrap my head around, but the data just keeps coming back: people value the packaging of a gift, the ambiance of a restaurant, the solidity of not worrying about the future – even though none of these things makes a whit of physical concrete difference to our lives. And even with this, marketing is so much more than these things!
Most things that are promoted or sold are not needed for human survival or even physical luxury, but they clearly fill human needs nevertheless. How else can we explain the appeal of fireworks or music or religion? And just as we are attracted to some things, we are repelled from others: the fear of the unknown and too much freedom (libertarianism’s Achilles tendon).
Marketing is also a central subject in the Torah.
When Ruben wants to save Joseph from the pit, he tries to command his brothers, but they ignore him; he did a lousy job of marketing, and it meant that his mission failed.
Judah, by contrast, cajoles the brothers, identifies with them, and sells them on the idea of selling Joseph for a profit. We have no idea what Judah was actually thinking! But we know what he said and that it worked; his brothers listened to him because he was persuasive. He was engaged in marketing.
As Joseph Cox has pointed out, Biblical Joseph in his lifetime developed what we now call marketing: he went from telling people what HE wanted them to hear (his narcissistic dreams), to telling people what they needed to hear (the dreams of the butler and baker), to telling people what would achieve the purposes of everyone involved (the dreams of Pharaoh).
The amazing thing about marketing is that while it has to have at least some tenuous connection to empirical information (a beauty product should not make one repellent, for example), it does not – ever – seek to share all known information about a subject. Marketing is selectively choosing what you want the listener to think about; it does not seek to share Truth but merely useful information.
So when Joseph interprets the dreams of the butler and baker, he tells them what they want to know – how the dreams matter to them. But this is not merely a parlor trick; if it was, the Torah would have just said, “They had dreams, Joseph interpreted them, and they came true.” But the Torah does not merely summarize: the dreams are detailed and specific.
Again, as Joseph Cox points out, the dreams had another meaning as well: they presaged the future of Egypt and Israel (in 300 years, Egypt would be plagued and then beheaded, while Israel would grow fat and be delivered into the hands of G-d). But biblical Joseph does not say this out loud; we cannot even know if he was aware of this interpretation! Just as with Judah’s “how do we profit from killing him? Let’s sell him!” The Torah is telling us that what really matters is what Joseph said: he told the butler and baker what they needed to hear.
When Joseph is later brought before Pharaoh and asked to interpret the king’s dreams, Joseph tells Pharaoh what Pharaoh needed to hear, and what would work best for Joseph’s future as well: “Seven years of plenty, and seven years of famine.” This is marketing at its best. But what Joseph does not do is suggest that the seven alien ears of corn and cows represent Israel coming into Egypt and devastating the host!
Both interpretations are probable – or even, with the benefit of hindsight, certain. But the true marketer picks his words with care, selecting the part of the story that works best all around.
G-d grants Abram success in the battle of the kings, but the world ignored G-d’s miraculous role – so G-d doubles down by promising (and then delivering) a much more showy event in the Exodus, designed to force the world to acknowledge that G-d exists, to birth a nation through a grand spectacle.
At the same time as the plagues and the Exodus, G-d is conducting a parallel marketing campaign to the Jewish people, one with different goals. In other words, G-d knows his audience, and tailors his words and actions accordingly! G-d is marketing!
What Joseph and Moses and G-d are doing is not a lie – but it is certainly being selective with the truth. And I think the Torah is making this quite explicitly into a virtue.
Think of a marriage. What we choose to say matters: no marriage could survive if every passing thought was voiced. The best marriages are between people who choose to see the positive in the other person. This is how beautiful relationships are built, not on the bedrock of Complete and Absolute Truth. Those who insist on telling it as they see it are terrible at human relationships.
Recognizing the positive is only part of the proverbial elephant, but it remains a part of the elephant nevertheless – it is usefully true in itself. And the Torah’s descriptions of Joseph and Moses and G-d all make it clear that marketing is front and center in the campaign to grow and thrive and to build holiness.
As Rabbi Sacks put it: “For Jews, holiness lies not in the way the world is but in the way it ought to be.” And how do we “sell” what ought to be? By imagining and promoting a vision for the future – by marketing something that does not now exist! (There is a risk of being accused of charlatanism, of course.)
It seems to me that the line between marketing and lying has nothing to do with the visions themselves: a marketer is a crook when they knowingly act in bad faith. But if they believe in their vision themselves, no matter how adventuresome it might be, then they are honestly doing what mankind is supposed to do. When we market, we are trying to sell the world on a vision of how the world ought to be. And if that vision is consistent with holiness, then marketing is G-d’s own work – and we are His agents.
Published in General
We make things so by believing in them. I suppose in that way, inspiring someone to believe when something is not yet so is indeed a noble thing. From darkness, light. From despair, hope. From tragedy, miracles …
This is a topic I know nothing about but that fascinates me to no end.
I live in Germany, a country well-known for its pinny pinching consumers. Many consumers here are inherently suspicious of any advertising: first because it may be a sign that a company needs to market in order to compensate for some deficiency, second because they know that the costs of those advertisements are passed onto the consumer in the form of higher prices.
One of the most successful consumer retail companies in Germany – ALDI – was famous for taking out almost no advertisements for decades (a policy which is now slowly changing). They were able to convert those savings into lower prices for the consumer, and the consumers took notice.
What’s interesting about a culture that tends to shun advertising is that consumers need to put in much more leg work on their own to determine where their dollars (or euros) are best spent. And that’s very apparent in Germany: people are constantly sharing tips and experience by word-of-mouth on which brands are worthwhile and which are not.
But the lesson is that the money saved at the cash register (thanks to the lack of marketing) is still often paid for in extra time and effort required by the consumer.
One of these is not like the others…. Where would the U.S. stand in the world without fireworks? Music and religion are universal, but serious fireworks, even for the common man, are a uniquely American pastime. Some Asian cultures also value them, but those governments don’t really let their subjects enjoy them like we do.
Yeah, I like fireworks. (-:
Surprisingly, Germany is actually more liberal than almost any state in the US on fireworks….for one night a year (NYE).
During the last week of the year, almost every size of fireworks are legal for sale to anyone over 18, and at midnight, thousands of people gather in the central squares and streets of every city and shoot them off….at each other, at buildings, at parked vehicles with gas in the tank, you name it. Lots of people get taken to the hospital.
One year we were invited to a NYE party in the 6th floor of a house in downtown Berlin. We opened the windows at midnight to watch the spectacle only to have a rocket fly right through the window into the living room. Spicy.
Gosh, I now see marketing in a whole new way! I think you are correct about this:
The saying, if you build it, they will come, isn’t really so: good marketing counts!
Coincidentally, I recently saw a teaser for an online marketing course by Jordan Belfort (aka “the Wolf of Wall St.”). In the teaser, he was talking about the need to start every interaction by interviewing the customer first to find out what the customer really needs.
So here’s the question: what happens if the salesperson comes to the realization that the customer’s needs would be better served by a competitor’s product? The salesperson might well still believe in his own company’s product, but no product is the perfect fit for each customer.
The moral duty would seem to be for the salesperson to tell the potential customer the truth. But the salesperson also has a duty to his employer. And his employer may also be a decent person who makes a decent product/service, but happens to be in dire financial straits at the moment.
So I’d say that the split loyalties inherent in salesmanship and the messiness of real life make such moral comparisons to religion inappropriate.
If religion does not govern our real lives and marketing, then it is irrelevant.
My point was that there is a deep distinction between marketing your faith and marketing a product.
By definition, you believe in the faith you’re marketing to others. Otherwise it wouldn’t be your faith. But real life often forces people to market products they don’t believe in.
There really, really should not be this distinction.
I’m genuinely curious: why not?
There’s also a magic in life which is essential to being human.
When part of the gift is putting something of ourselves into it — carefully wrapping it around in layers of coloured tissue paper, tying it in specially bought ribbon and a bow, putting thought and caring into a handwritten message — it reflects that magic.
It communicates a feeling that it’s hard to find the words for. It runs so deep that, without it, we’d be lost. It speaks to something in our souls. It warms our hearts when, baby, it really is cold outside …
Gorgeous. Thank you!
@mendel, a few thoughts come to mind. First, I couldn’t sell a product I didn’t believe in it. I might have no way if knowing if it’s the best product (but it would need to be a good product), since someone else could do a heck of a good job of marketing theirs, even if it wasn’t better. If a person is selling an inferior product, he or she is in the wrong business. Second, one can’t be certain whether the consumer will do better with one product or another; there can be many complexities to using a product, and we rarely know the consumer well enough to know precisely how well they will use it, if it suits them perfectly, if others than that individual will be using it, and so on. What the consumer does after purchasing the product is up to him or her. For example, I did consulting work, facilitating team conflicts and helping them identify their own solutions, with suggestions along the way. Although I would tell a manager that he shouldn’t hire me unless he was prepared to follow through on the team agreements, they often didn’t, with all kinds of reasons. Was I selling a poor product? I don’t think so. Would another consultant have been more helpful, more convincing? Maybe. The point is that I had a history of success in doing that work, and I wouldn’t have done it if I couldn’t do it well. Part of my marketing was presenting the difficulties and rewards of doing the work, and my references; after that, the manager was in charge.
A salesman who worked for me was fond of the phrase:
“In sales as in medicine, prescription without diagnosis is malpractice”
Thanks for this, @mendel. I’m heading to Germany (Monchengladbach), to spend the Holidays with the sweet Martina. Your insights into the culture and nature of the German people are extremely interesting and helpful to me.
This presumes a lot of financial and occupational resources that you or I or Iwe may have, but a lot of people in the real world don’t.
Most people working marketing/sales jobs aren’t involved in designing the product(s) they sell in any way, so they can’t influence the quality of the product they’re selling. Very often, there’s no contact at all between front-line sales staff and product development.
And many (if not most) people working front-line marketing/sales jobs don’t have the credentials, talent, financial independence, and/or geographic independence to be choosy about where they work or to simply quit a job if they don’t believe in the product they’re selling. People in small towns with kids, mortgages, parents, and other local commitments (ie. people living the ideal social conservative lifestyle) often only have very limited employment opportunities available.
If it comes down to “believing in the product you’re selling” vs. “hawking an inferior product to put food on your kids’ table”, which would you pick?
If those were the only two choices? Food on the kids’ table.
I think it depends. Marketing is simply identifying the consumers that want your product and what form of communication will be persuasive.
Its importance has to do with how differentiated the product is.
Marketing and advertising are more important the less differentiated the product is.
For instance the foundation of international tax law is based on the idea (and it was proven) that value of men’s razors comes from advertising and look at how the advertising department is in this country with no corporate taxes.
If you have a product, and you thought to yourself, “the sort of person who wants my product is…..” you did marketing.
I used to think this. Now I am really not so sure.
In my business, most of our marketing consists of educating the consumer, teaching them value something that they do not even realize is there.
While I recognize that my example is extreme, it’s certainly not “argumentum ad absurdum”.
The only real sales job I’ve ever worked (in college) was in a small rural town, and most of my colleagues were indeed former homemakers with no college education, with kids in the local school and elderly parents around the corner and a mortgage to pay who simply had no other local employment options. They were understandably somewhat bitter when I quit after our boss started pressuring us to hard sell our products to customers who clearly shouldn’t be buying them, while they had almost no other option but to stay.
I doubt this type of scenario is that rare.
Here is a link to 20 minutes of Dave Ramsey talking about how credit is marketed. I did not listen to the whole thing, but I assume it is pretty much the same info he gives in his Buyer Beware lesson in Financial Peace University.
We all respond emotionally to marketing. It is hard not to. They question is, do we make financial decisions based on marketing? In my life, the older I get, the less I respond to marketing.
Question: is there a difference between marketing and advertising? For example, I’ve been looking at new hand guards for my AR. I’ve been looking at all the major manufacturers, reviewing the “specs”, etc. There is a company somewhat local to me in Friday Harbor, WA. Here is their website. Then there is the company Magpul, which is very widely known. Here is their website. There is a difference between the two. I have no emotional response to the first. It is an example of what I’d call advertising. Here’s our stuff, here are some sales, here’s some info about us, etc. Magpul’s site, however, I very much have an emotional response to. The first thing you see are some fly lookin’ cats up in the mountains in their high quality tactical gear, having some coffee out of their high quality tactical thermos. Don’t you just think that if you buy some of that stuff you can be as awesome as they are….I must buy some stuff!
Anyway…I’m calm now. Are Magpul lying with their marketing? No, of course not. It’s just a nice photo. Are they knowingly trying to play on your emotions? Are they saying “If they see we have a quality website, then they’ll know we have quality stuff?” Yes.
It depends on what you mean by inferior. If you mean that it is seriously lacking in integrity (like it breaks on first use), I wouldn’t sell it. There are always better products. And they are often more expensive, sometimes with good reason. People might want to buy mediocre products for good reason, especially if they can’t afford better. The bigger problem are the foolish folks who spend way too much on hot products, just because they’re hot. So the key is, if you sell an average product, I have no problem, if you don’t wildly exaggerate it’s quality or performance. (I’m concerned about all the terms we’re throwing around–inferior, average, best, middle-range. I’m simply talking about lying about what you’re selling. Even in a small town, a person can find a sales or marketing job where they don’t have to compromise their values.)
If I was the customer, I would appreciate being pointed to a more appropriate product and would be inclined to go back to the salesman again for other products.
It would also make sense for the salesman to say something like:
If I was the customer and felt that I had been lied to, I wouldn’t go back to that salesman and they would end up in more dire financial straits. If I thought I had been told a straight story – even educated – by the salesman, I would be inclined to go back to him/her and recommend the company to others.
Reason 987 why I was an Engineer and not in marketing.
A friend of mine (not on Ricochet) wrote me, in response to my line:
“Those who insist on telling it as they see it are terrible at human relationships.”
This is the thing, though: Engineers live and die by marketing, and they are totally unaware of it. Engineers think that all they need is data, but they at least as vulnerable to effective marketing as anyone else (engineers are usually less aware when they are being played).
Ain’t that the truth.
Engineer: “I need to buy this Thing that I saw advertised. It’s better than the Thing IT provides.”
IT: “Please explain the specific things your Thing does that the Thing the company provided doesn’t do.”
Engineer: “It’s just better, ok! It’s what everyone is doing but us!”
There’s a conversation I’ve had a million times…
@iwe and @spin – you are both right. Engineers need to be able to sell their ideas. I guess I think of that as having an ability to communicate, but it is a fine line.
Engineers should just engineer. Leave the selling to others.
Excellent.
What about when the engineer is the idea-person as well? Someone has to do the selling initially.