Marketing - Classic Or Dud?

You buy a record - any record, Britney or Aesop Rock or Travis Tritt or whoever. Marketing is a) however you heard of/noticed that record's existence; b) whatever anticipation you might have as to what that record is like. Marketing can be done badly, or crassly, or unethically - in itself it is neither evil nor escapable.

You can substitute almost any noun for "record" and almost any transitive verb for "buy" too.

(So 'classic', then.)

You're talking about "seeing good products clearly" but in order to even be aware of the existence of those products you need marketing, whether at a product or category level. The peer pressure sloganeering side of marketing is the side most people think of because it's crude and highly visible, but the question isn't "advertising: classic or dud?".

My basic suggestion for people opposed to the very concept of marketing is to spend as little money as possible on consumer goods. But I think most people opposed to it are actually, like me, opposed to a lot of the crasser, or more intrusive or unethical aspects.

It CAN be fun, creative and challenging, but is also full of handle- turning grunt work. Like anything, it's extremely difficult to do well, but unlike say, aeronautical engineering or intracellular biochemistry, everyone seems to think it's easy.

I have mixed feelings about the worth of Marketing - on one hand I feel it's a pseudo-discipline, full of bullshitters, self-publicists and half-baked theories which go out of fashion every 3 years, on the other hand good marketing maximises the potential of good products, creating wealth and jobs in all sectors - manufacturing, R+D, sales etc.

Alam-at-home - care to expand on your comments?

Kim's idea that marketing which attempts to persuade as well as make aware is bad marketing is closer to what a lot of people feel. But persuasion comes with language, to some extent - would you prefer an entirely factual catalogue of records, say, (artist-title-label- release no.) or one with some kind of description? There's also often a patrician element to this argument - 'I can spot when I am being marketed to and judge on the product, but these poor kids cannot'.

Dr C is right about the bullshit-ridden industry and it is full of wankers. I'm in market research, rather than marketing - and market research has a lot of vile aspects.

Most advertising is simply about awareness - first and foremost to remind the target customer that Gap or BMW or Nike are still around, doing what they do. If you're already even slightly interested you may read the ad copy or look at the graphics more closely - research shows that most people have to see the ad 3 or 4 times at least before they do that. The ad copy/design should convey a simple message which creates the desire to find out more. There should be an obvious path to finding out more (in the store, pick up the phone, reply card etc etc). Then what you see has to substantiate the claim made in the awareness campaign. If it doesn't the product dies. If it does - then other elements of the marketing process come in.

When people claim they can spot when they're being marketed to, they're partly right, but only in the sense that they're always being marketed to - how else would they know about a product? When they claim that they can see through the marketing to the product, they're ALWAYS wrong unless they've tried the product already - most times all you know about a product is what the marketing tells you. For some products there's nothing else to know - Coca-Cola is ALL brand.

The activities that i particularly detest in creating awareness of things/brands/services are ones that intrude on public space -- the dull hatred of bill boards at base, and the sponsorship of educational resources. And on a more Naomi Klein tip, the whole phenomenon of arrested development, where marketing hijacks grass- roots culture for its own unrelated purposes, is something i'm particularly unhappy about.

You must also remember i am deeply hypocritical. i have worked for a direct-marketing publisher and been commissioned by a small company that directs corporate money into manufacturing school resources.

I like being marketed at because it makes me feel loved. You are in a loving perfession Will, feel better about it. (And teaching people English, so that they can then be marketed at in a different language - dud).

Often this is due to resentment at being categorized. The thought that your choices are PREDICTABLE is insulting to many. Most of us like to think that we're ruthlessly good at searching out the BEST literature, clothes, music etc. This is of course, crap!

Marketing categorizes people according to a variety of means - income, education, where you live, what you already own, aspirations etc..Many people feel that they're somehow above that and that even attempting to put them into any kind of category is insulting and condescending. We all like to feel we're an individual -and while, of course each one of us IS, Marketing WORKS without needing to recognize this. Whether you like it or not you're predictable! Personally I couldn't care less - I conform to various predictive stereotypes of a late 30's white, middle class professional male. So what?

1) The most pernicious influence of marketing, in cultural terms, happens when it defines the product. Culture by market research, giving people what (we) think (we) want – the same old films, pop groups, magazines etc etc continue to be commissioned because expensive research indicates this is what (we) want. It’s an abdication of responsibility, a failure to go on one’s nerve. As (we) all know, the most exciting moments in culture are when (we) are given something (we) didn’t know we wanted. Market research wouldn’t have created a Presley or a Punk. It may have helped create a Britney, but I’m not sure what the implications of this are…

2) In his book, A Year With a Swollen Head (copyright M Sinker), Brian Eno talks about the distinction between the artwork and the ‘frame’. In the largest sense, the frame refers to everything beyond the actual sound of record, or the reel of film. So in pop these things such as: the sleeve, the video, the clothes the performers wear, the interviews, the intertexts... all are ways of considering the cultural placement of the product. It’s a way of thinking about how your product will appear in the larger marketplace, and so is a form of marketing. This can lead to self- conciousness, but in general that’s a good thing.

(hence marketing = "art" generally haha)

And possibly marketing also drives me mad because in the vast majority of cases I could do the job much better than people than people paid to do it. But then I feel this way about most things except music.

Whilst I agree that the "must have" effect within peer groups is beneficial to the sales of a product and often helped into being by direct marketing, it is in the end uncontrollable by the instigator and therefore out of bounds to be called marketing. Feeding into and harnessing public opinion can be marketing, but public opinion itself is not. Is there a difference between someone drinking a can of soft drink in a movie chosen by the actor because he likes it and in the script he drinks a soft drink, and product placement of a can of Pepsi. Certainly there is a difference in intent, is there a difference in effect. (Indeed marketing may well be one of the reasons why the actor picked said drink in the first place. But taste is also a reason and taste is part of the product and hence not marketing).

Equally I can say I rather like Kit Kats, but refuse to buy them because they are made by Nestle, about whose breaking of the WHO code with regards to the supply of baby milk powder in the developing world.

Passive-aggressive mind games no one else even knows about: as marketing strategies go, not very successful.

They gentrified the tinfoil hat. pic.twitter.com/96t8LFVk3U

— Klara (@klara_sjo) January 6, 2026