[TeMPOraL]

> I know this is a bit cheeky, but HN sometimes has this comically simplistic view of other professions. It's as bad as the older C_Os who refer to all of dev and IT as "computer people." As someone who is both a developer and a marketer I can tell you both fields have depth and value, and neither is easy to do well.

I don't think this is the real root issue you're thinking of. I don't believe HN has a simplistic view of marketers (to contrast, I'd say it seems to have a simplistic view of management). Many people here, myself included, would never deny that the job of marketer is difficult, challenging, and has a lot of depth. The issue we have is with the job itself.

> Success often hinges on making something people want. Marketing done well is hugely helpful in determining both what people want and whether they perceive a product as a solution to their problems, and it can help guide product development with marketing analytics and other user data. I don't think I'd ever have been successful without a marketing background.

This is perfect. This is exactly what marketing should be! Problem is, it's rarely it.

The marketing as we usually encounter it, on the receiving end, isn't about "making something people want". It's about "making people want something". This simple transposition of words is the point at which marketing turns from objectively valuable into malicious and exploitative, and ultimately the source of hate against the whole field.

You wrote that marketing done well "is hugely helpful in determining both what people want and whether they perceive a product as a solution to their problems, and it can help guide product development with marketing analytics and other user data". Yeah, sure. Except it's motte-and-bailey again, because we all know that's not what's going on. The data isn't used to optimize the product to deliver better value, it's used to optimize the product to trick the buyer into purchase. And analytics aren't just guiding product development (in either direction), they're also resold on the side, so that someone else can better trick the buyer into purchasing something else they don't need.

The social contract between the individual and the firm is: the individual gives the firm money, in exchange for the firm delivering value. Marketing, as implemented in practice, is the art of maximizing the money received while minimizing the value given back (because value costs money to make). Hence the hate.

[manigandham]

Desire is not a bad thing, and the reason why someone wants something doesn't matter after the point at which they want it. I'd much rather people have agency over their decisions than complain about an entire business concept.

Also products are definitely getting better all the time. Feedback is a part of marketing and personalization to predict consumer needs is the next wave. Tricking users is not a viable business model for any legitimate company.

[majewsky]

Then a lot a profitable companies aren't legitimate.

Just yesterday I saw a documentary (in German TV) about magazine ads for overprized health products with little to no actual health benefit (like a shoe insert which, literal quote, "instantly cures 100s of chronic ailments"). These ads always have testimonials from doctors, but when the journalists tried to find those doctors, they always turned out to be stock photo models.

That's marketing at its worst. But also the first thing that comes to my mind when I think of marketing.

Maybe marketing is similar to infrastructure. When it's good, it's invisible; so you only notice it when it fails.

[manigandham]

Yes, clearly a health product with no health benefit and marketed falsely is not legitimate, and in many places there are rules against false advertising.

I'm not sure if you're trying to disagree with my comment or making a different point...

[TeMPOraL]

> Desire is not a bad thing, and the reason why someone wants something doesn't matter after the point at which they want it.

It matters if they didn't want the product before your marketing campaign, and started to want it after. Desire itself is not a bad thing. Inducing desire in people is a completely different topic.

> I'd much rather people have agency over their decisions

Sure. And marketing as an industry mostly works to override people's agency. That's what all the tricks from Cialdini's book do. That's why the industry is so keenly weaponizing research from psychology and cognitive sciences.

> Also products are definitely getting better all the time.

That's a tangential topic (and a big one), but I very much question the thing those products are getting better at. It somehow never is about maximizing value to the buyer. Quite the opposite, actually - everything from white goods through tools, clothing, cars, to software, is getting less useful, more disposable, less repariable, of worse quality, and locked behind DRMs and service-instead-of-product schemes.

[manigandham]

Why does it matter? You haven't answered that, other than seemingly stating that you don't like it.

No, agency is not overridden. That's a crazy stretch. The most advertising can do is create desire, but a person still has to make the decision to act. Otherwise you're talking about mind control and if we had that then the world look very different.

Re: product quality, you're just making quite a lot of subjective statements so I'll skip it.