Number 99: May 4, 2005

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This week in Katydid:

• Casting Shadows
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Casting Shadows
Some believe marketing is the devil's work. In stories of future corporate dystopias, the marketers aren't just evil, they're the vilest, spinning craven desires into gold enough to fill the coffers. To watch these stories is to see your profession esteemed at the level of contempt reserved for pimps, hustlers, drug dealers, and lawyers.

I could take refuge in the fact that these same people turn to marketing when they need to reach their consumers, but that's evading the question. When you ask if marketing is evil, you're implicitly asking if consumption is evil. Is desire evil? Marketers were not trained to answer philosophical questions.

My feeling is that one can conduct oneself with integrity in whatever one does. You can market without leveraging the moral weaknesses of others. You can discover the unmet need of the market and design a product that will fulfill or resolve it. Marketing can be, in fact, a noble profession in the hands of noble people.

Often the problem comes from marketers having a product and then needing to find someone to buy it. The question changes from "How can we fulfill your needs?" to "How can we get you to purchase?" That shift of perspective puts pressure on the marketer to create needs purchasers didn't know they had. That's where manipulation and lying enter the profession.

I know that sales requires warm leads, but when the market research is not there, that becomes a request to find more gullible people. A good marketer will be able to tell you how large the market is for people who can't grow their own hair, but it's harder to discover the number of people who can't grow hair, who are willing to try something new, and who haven't been completely disillusioned yet. Marketers have to cast wider and wider nets to catch the last naïve consumers in the world.

When businesses focus first on the need and then find a way to fulfill it, the marketing is built into the product. All the reasons you need are there. Those products sell themselves. Warm leads come from unmet needs.

As much as I'm a fan of Seth Godin, I think many will misinterpret what it means to develop a remarkable product (a Purple Cow). Planet Hollywood was remarkable in that celebrities founded it, but there was no unmet need for dining in an atmosphere of movie memorabilia. We bought the t-shirt at many other themed restaurants.

As consumers, we have many unmet needs. We need love, support, and companionship. We need to learn, explore, and grow. We need to be told the truth; and we need to demand honesty, integrity, and compassion. As marketers, we rarely set our sights so high; yet, for those needs consumers will pay any price. That's where the money is folks. And consumers pay a premium for what amounts to mere shadows.

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Kevin Troy Darling

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