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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
Engineers who can only engineer are greatly limiting their career potential. They become like lawyers: tools to be deployed in the hands of others.
Marketing requires a very challenging degree of empathy, something that every person – even tools – could always do better.
This sounds like a great storyline for a movie! We could call it, “Miracle on 34th Street” or something…
I have, many times, thanked a salesman for his honesty, and given the business elsewhere – and find a way to do business with the first salesman in the future, one way or another.
In the long run, good faith pays.
And tends to provide verification of the belief. If faith begins as something distinct from knowledge, it often ends as knowledge.
iWe at his best continues to resemble William James at his best.
Abraham was the first marketer. Running after strangers passing by his tent, he brought them inside for lavish food and drink. At the end of the meal, he gave them a choice: pay for the meal or thank G-d for it and then it’s on the house. Which would you choose?
Oh, some of us are aware — both that our products have to be promoted and that they shouldn’t be over-promoted.
One of my duties was to go over the details with the pitch-men.
“The first three points are fine. The next one probably is, but that mode of operation hasn’t been tested yet because funding for the testing has been held up. The one after that would be an addition to our capabilities and will require some lead time …”
Not a coincidence: iWe is interpreting the Torah. So is Yeshua, whom Jonathan Edwards was quoting in The Religious Affections, which James cites.
Many salespeople that get the job done are sort of sociopaths. There is just a limit to how much you can be completely empathetic and forthright, but it varies greatly from position to position.
You can make a lot of money abusing your ability to build rapport with people, that is just a fact.
I go to a restaurant where the ambiance is more important then the food. I can think of another one works pretty much the opposite.
I don’t like it, but I feel better when I dress better and I feel better when I’m around people that dress better.
In Minneapolis, Cub foods is way cheaper but you feel like you’re in a mausoleum. Lunds and Byerly’s charges through the nose but it’s very nice and you can get a nice meal there for peanuts.
I subscribe to a bunch of twitter feeds that just hate TV ministers. Some of them have really lousy theology, reportedly. They are all wealthy. What is going on there?
A very interesting post here. I think that if the post used the word “persuasion” instead of “marketing” it would make for
better marketinga more persuasive argument. But the point remains entirely valid. Man is a social animal, and as such man’s fulfillment often depends on persuading his society (or some segment of it) to accept his point of view. So there is little doubt that man will engage in efforts at persuasion. The question becomes, what kind of persuasion works best?Advertisers are supposedly experts at this. But sometimes I have to wonder about that. Some commercials seem to be designed to annoy the listener. For example, ambulance-chasing lawyers who turn their phone number into a jingle. Or drug companies that buy the rights to a 40 year old pop song and then twist their message to fit the modified lyrics of that song, even if the new message makes no sense. I guess the idea here is simply promoting recognition of the brand, rather than the benefits of the product. Hence the commercials that air over and over and over, which is not only annoying but also leaves me wondering how overpriced the product would have to be to pay for all that advertising. Are you listening, My Pillow guy?
Very interesting. I just purchased a large and expensive orchestral sample library from a German company. This library is known to be superior to its competitors. I’ve been watching it for a few years, and hoping to buy it. But this company rarely advertised (unless you found them and subscribed to their newsletter). And they never offered any sort of sale pricing (the ultimate marketing tool) – until this year.
Perhaps it was in response to their competitors, or to better reach Americans, who are conditioned to expect sale pricing. Either way, this company offered aggressive Black Friday pricing this year just as I was finally prepared to purchase. Their sales pricing saved me about 30% on what would have been a $4000 transaction.