[Sir_Substance]

>good marketing will get your product in front of people who want to use it, who may never have stumbled upon it otherwise.

The problem is there's only so much work that can be done in that area, and way more marketing agencies than quality work. The excess labor bleeds into mercenary work where advertising companies shill for whoever pays them, regardless of merit or ethics.

Marketing helps products that would succeed anyway based on merit succeed faster and harder, and also helps unseat incumbents who have inertia but a bad product. It also allows products that should by every right sink like a lead balloon lurch haphazardly above the waterline, leaving behind a wake of cheated customers.

Oh, if only we could trust people in marketing to refuse help to the latter.