Marketers, be simple!

This article probably looks like an offtopic for Habr, but the above reasoning can be applied to any business areas, including IT business .

I assert with absolute certainty that, in addition to deception, marketing is also an unceremonious time taking away from people (according to the results of comments: I will not deliberately say that there is a difference between real marketing and what we call it because in the comments different opinions on this topic).

No, we will not talk about calls to your home phone with advantageous offers to cure your teeth or answer questionnaire questions, taking “ only 20 minutes” of your time. Everyone got used to it for a long time, and those who cannot devote time can simply politely refuse or hang up the phone silently.
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I want to say about the less obvious, but no less blatant way to take away a part of their lives from people, without giving anything in return.

A simple example. Once I signed up for MTS news to find out about the emergence of favorable tariffs or discounts, giving you the opportunity to save on communication. Everything would be fine, but for the year of subscription I did not receive a single message, which really allows you to save more than a few percent. At the same time every day comes a few news, and it seems that everything is constantly getting cheaper and improving. Until then, until you begin to delve into the essence of "profitable" offers. And then it invariably turns out that there are several footnotes or explanations to footnotes that nullify the profitability of the action. And so in all areas where there is marketing. Once I was not even too lazy and drew a vicious picture on this topic.

Are these things trivial? I agree. But a lot of time is regularly spent on them, because all spheres are permeated with marketing, and it is almost impossible to avoid aimless waste of a part of life.

For example, choosing some kind of technique, especially difficult, has to filter a lot of marketing gimmicks to get to the bottom of it and see which option is better in reality. For just one choice of a high-quality computer, it took me many days of pure time - reading large technical articles, reviews, studying problems on forums, blogs.

Or here's another example of how hard it is to choose something. I bought a washing machine. It seems to be Bosch, a good manufacturer, high-quality equipment. Maybe it is so. But I needed the function of protection from children. It was on the same model (for those interested - WLX 20361), but was missing on the more expensive 461st, which differs in essence only in the size of the display and a couple of additional programs we need. I wondered if this was the case at the Bosch company store. The manager said that this is just a mistake on the site, and, of course, both models have such a function. I regret that I did not record it on the recorder. I then ordered the 461st car in a cheaper online store and only at home I found out that she really had no protection against children, and the description on the website was correct. There was no one to blame, except myself, a return. But I have a negative attitude towards Bosch. Needless to say, after calling again and describing our problem with reference to the words of their manager, they simply got rid of us, saying that they could not help.

In general, not everyone has enough time, energy and knowledge to make a competent choice. Therefore, they are amenable to advertising, so as not to get involved in the intricacies of complex comparisons.

Here (thanks tossssik ), by the way, is an excellent illustration of how the buyer would like to act when choosing a product:



Most would-be marketers are completely incapable of acting differently than just deceiving people by hiding the unsightly sides of the promoted product or service.

And how many truly unique inventions and ideas are buried because of the marketing pressure of large corporations with their clumsy, but well-promoted products!

It can be argued that in the face of fierce competition it is impossible to act in a different way? Partly I agree - when most manufacturers use an explicit and implicit deception of customers, competing with each other in the ability to speak more eloquently from scratch, to say honestly that your product is no better, very difficult.

But in the end, the fraud is revealed, and often companies have to disentangle the fruits of their lies.

So is it not better to initially behave honestly and openly and purposefully to look for your strengths? Suppose that at first there will be no dizzying success, but then trust in the company will start to grow steadily. In a crisis, when profits are small for all market players, this should become doubly relevant.

On the topic - an article by Leonid Kaganov about advertising, written in his fascinating style. One of the thoughts of the author is let us not be hooded to loudly praise the fact that we are truly in dismay. It really will, and is already becoming, an honest alternative to deceitful marketing.

Update . Published the second part , conciliatory.