The Point Of Marketing

From RespectedExpertsOfAnySort

To most people, the company with the best marketing campaign look more like experts than the real experts do. (That is ThePointOfMarketing.) This strongly assists the latest vendor selling snake-oil that obviously won't actually get the job done.

No, that's not the point of marketing. It's not even the point of marketing promotion (which is what you seem to be referring to here).

The American Marketing Association puts it like this:

"Marketing is the process of planning and executing the conception, pricing, promotion, and distribution of ideas, goods, and services to create exchanges that satisfy individual and organizational objectives."

Now, clearly this can be done with varying degrees of cynicism, but it annoys me when there's a knee jerk assumption that all marketing must be manipulative or deceitful.

More later, maybe.

It is useful to think of marketing as an interface. It is the part of a company that interfaces with customers. Like any interface, it is imperfect and does not always allow all desired information to pass through it.

At its best, marketing serves these purposes:

Determining customer needs.
Influencing company activities to meet customers' needs.
Informing customers of goods/services that meet their needs.
Exchange of goods/services for money.

When marketing works this way, it is good for everyone: the customers get stuff they want, the company's employees get paid, and the company's owners make profits.

The DarkSide of marketing is when it tricks customers into believing that the company's goods/services are more valuable to them than they really are. We can probably all agree that fraud is wrong.