This is Marketing: You Can't Be Seen Until You Learn To See

"Nobody had written the definitive book of the post-advertising age. It needed to be able to explain everything from Airbnb to Trump to the success of Instagram. If there’s going to be a coherent, unified theory of marketing, it will not only explain what we see, but also give us the tools to create our own change in the world. I know that marketing is powerful. I refuse to let people off the hook, simply because they’re following orders or want to make some money. If we’re going to do marketing, we’re going to make change. I want us to see what we’re doing and invest the emotional labor to do the right thing, because it matters. Arlie Hochschild most famously used the term in the 1980s; it has been used to describe dumping a certain kind of work on a certain kind of worker—in her case, she was writing about flight attendants. “If we’re going to do marketing, we’re going to make change” I view it in a broader sense, though, and see it as a privilege, not a misogynistic trap. The alternative—physical labor—is not something I’d be good at, and it’s not something I’d find rewarding either. But showing up as a professional to bring emotion and guts and insight to bear—to solve a problem and to help someone move forward—I view that as an opportunity to do real work. People aren’t nearly suspicious enough of marketing. Marketing that manipulates can prey on our fears and our dreams and our prejudices to persuade us to do things we’ll regret. On the other hand, marketing creates a bottle of wine we love, an outfit that’s our favorite and a cause we’d die for. Let’s see it for what it is. You find it impossible to believe that halitosis was invented? Have you noticed how some cultures go to enormous lengths not to show a stranger their teeth, hiding behind hands whenever they eat or even laugh? Or the amount of time and money people in some culture spend grooming their hair? Or the attention paid to body distance between strangers in various locales? It’s all invented ! To imagine that some of it is invented by a profit-seeking marketer isn’t that hard. “People aren’t nearly suspicious enough of marketing” Happy Hour was invented. Bumming a cigarette was invented, as was tapping the ends of the pack . . . Google it. And yes, the Vietnam War was invented too. It’s what humans do. We tell stories that change others, and sometimes we do it for selfish reasons."