Marketing is nothing more than convincing people to buy a lot of things that they do not need

Disclaimer: I wrote this article when attending Estonian Business School in 2007-2008. Our English teacher gave us the headline. You can find out how I felt about it.

This headline is created by a bunch of hippies. I couldn’t possibly disagree more with it. Hippies and people acting like hippies are the cancer of market economy. They are spending all their energy to fight against it while they could use their creativity to benefit from it.

Marketing is only a way to tell public about new products, services or even good causes. We have to understand that nobody is forced to buy anything. No matter how much people argue about marketing it all comes down to the freedom of choice.

You can make people buy stuff what they don’t need, yes, but only once. How many of us have bought food with wrong flavor just because you thought it would be good? How many of us went back the next day and bought that same portion just to make sure it really was bad? None.

Sure, we can be loyal to different brands for a while even though our expectations sometimes aren’t met entirely. Good brands are like friends, you can put up their moods for a long time if you really like them, but if you don’t, it’s time to move on.

Marketing can actually bring more friendships into your life if look it in a right way. When someone really loves Big Mac, who has a heart to deny that joy from his life just because that product is marketed by millions of dollars.

If marketing is all about pleasing desires what would happen if one day European Union would say that all products and packages have to look equals with only short description on top. What if you wouldn’t know that today you can buy two Big Macs for one’s price because of banned marketing. I don’t want to even think about that kind of world, it’s too scary.


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