16 lines
3.9 KiB
Markdown
16 lines
3.9 KiB
Markdown
# Marketing
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Marketing is an unethical practice, plentifully used in [capitalism](capitalism.md), of forcing a product or corporate propaganda by means of lying, tricks, brainwashing, torture, exploiting psychological weaknesses of people and others. This manifests mostly as advertisements and commercials in media but also in other ways such as fake product reviews, product placement etc.
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Specific practices used in marketing are:
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- **Lies** and falsehoods. Every ad will present the product as the best, even though not all products can be best. Actors will be paid to lie about how the product changed their life etc. -- so called **[astroturfing](astroturfing.md)**. Many times numbers and "facts" whose source is difficult to trace will be completely made up. **Fake discounts** are something constantly presented in ads.
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- **Extreme repetition**: this includes repeating the same commercial over and over (e.g. every 10 minutes) as well as repeating the name of the product in a completely retarded way (*"We recommend X because X is the best. For more info about X visit www.X.com. Remember, X is the best. Your X."*).
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- **Psychological tricks** such as **abusing songs** and shitty catchy melodies, often raping existing good music by for example changing the lyrics. This abuses the fact that a song will stick in one's head and keep torturing the person into thinking about the advertised product constantly. Other tricks include **shouting** or **fake empathy** ("we care about your" etc.).
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- **Misleading statistics**, presentation and interpretation of data. For example any success rate will be presented as the upper bound as such a number will be higher, typically 99% or 100%, i.e. *"our product is successful in up to 100% cases!"* (which of course gives zero information and only says the product won't succeed in more than 100% cases). A company may also run its own competition for a "best product", e.g. on [Facebook](facebook.md), in which all products are of course their products, and then the winning product will be seen on TV as a "contest winning product".
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- **Forcefully seizing attention**: ads are present practically everywhere, even embedded in "art" (even in that one pays for), in the sky (planes and blimps, ...), they play on every radio you hear in every shop, they pop up on electronic devices one paid for, they can't be turned off. They are present in education materials and targeted at children. Audio of a commercial will be made louder to catch an attention when it starts playing on a commercial break.
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- **Bribing celebrities/influencers**. An *influencer* is nowadays a culturally accepted "job" whose sole work consists of lying, forcing products and spreading corporate propaganda.
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These practices are not rare, they are not even a behavior of a minority, they are not illegal and people don't even see them as unusual or undesirable. People in the US are so brainwashed they even pay to see commercials (Super Bowl). Under capitalism these practices are the norm and are getting worse and worse ever year.
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A naive idea still present among people is that ethical marketing is possible or that it's something that can be fixed by some law, a petition or something similar. In late stage capitalism this is not possible as an "ethical" marketing is a non effective marketing. Deciding to drop the most efficient weapons in the market warfare will only lead to the company losing customers to competition who embraces the unethical means, eventually going bankrupt and disappearing, leaving the throne to the bad guys. Laws will not help as laws are made to firstly favor the market, corporations pay full time lobbyists and law makers themselves are owners of corporations. Even if some small law against "unethical marketing" passes, the immense force and pressure of all the strongest corporations will work 24/7 on reverting the law and/or finding ways around it, legal or illegal, ethical or unethical. |