Marketing Agencies: One of the Beast's heads

Here in the good ole' U.S. of A., we have been engaged in a a war between our desires to have a fully free, clean, positive, healthy, unobstructed, attractive life & our desires to be all powerful, uninhibited, vial if we chose to be, glutinous, always right and labor free. The opposing sides manifest themselves in our politics as Liberals & Conservatives.

In spite of what each of the two sides claim to represent, the reality is that Liberals desire a a state wherein the government bears the burden of most of taking care of our "needs" so that we a free to fulfill our "wants"; while the Conservatives desire a state wherein the first rule is "survival of the fittest" and the government's role is to protect the champions.

Liberals prefer personal conduct to be governed by personal morality and ethics rather than law while Conservatives believe that the law should set the standard, which everyone should live by.

Liberals believe that economics should be fare: fare wage for honest labor. Conservatives believe that economics should be bartered: value is based on what people are willing to pay.

Liberals would prefer a classless society wherein everyone is equal and have all of the same opportunities. Conservatives prefer a competitive society wherein status is rewarded.

The foundation of the US social theory is Free Market Capitalism which means ultimately that the Conservative view is the stronger and is usually the victor of battles in this long fought war. As anyone who's gone through business school can tell you, it is Conservative economic theory that is taught to those acquiring business degrees. The theory informs the students that one of the first ideas they should embrace if they are to be successful business leaders is that they are responsible for ensuring that there are "classes" within society. In other words; business professionals must be willing to ensure that they are providing roles for the poor as well as for the wealthy and everything in between. The idea is that there can not be a such thing as wealth in a society where everyone is equal. Therefore, it is imperative that certain people are suppressed in their opportunity to advance while others are encouraged.

The so-called "Free Market" a.k.a., the "Stock Market" is another aspect of the Conservative economic theory. The stock market is the arena or competition for corporations and is the place where people are freely allowed to gamble on their prediction of failure or success of an enterprise. How the Free Market concept is sold to a society is as the concept that people with great ideas but not enough capital to make them happen, can be induced by the power of collective capital on the Free Market from venturists who believe in or see the value in the product. The reality is that the Free Market is where Venture Capitalists take control of other people's good ideas and squeeze the concepts for every monetary bit of worth they have before discarding them. The Free Market theory is also sold as an honest place for companies to compete and thereby advance knowledge, technology & encourage innovation. The reality is that everything is packaged to sell - the packaging doesn't honestly reflect the content.

Here is where Marketing Agencies come in. The job of a Marketing Agency is to "package" products in a manner that sells despite its content. Marketing agencies are responsible for greatly contributing to the corruption in the Free Market process by way of outright LIES. Marketers would tell you that silver was gold if it weren't for the law that prohibits blatant misrepresentation but they are allowed to bend the truth to the point just before breaking and they use every inch of leaveway they're allowed. You might ask yourself, "why?" The answer is simple; they need to successfully sell in order to make money. If the client is selling chunks of sh*t, you must package and market it as bitter chocolate and place a high price tag on it to make seem exclusive and tell people that only the refined pallets of the wealthy can appreciate such an aromatic flavor. Marketers yell at you through your televisions on infomercials, urging you to not miss out on the next best thing. Marketers play violins and speak in soft tones and tell heart wrenching stories to lure you into buying insurance policies or contributing to charities. Marketers threaten you from the pulpits with tales of terrible punishments for the non-obedient and then pass the collection baskets about. Marketers erect billboards of sunny paradises to lead you to resorts established in the midst of third-world ghettos. Marketers write political speeches telling you what you want to hear to elicit you vote and support of a politician with entirely different agendas from what's being pushed.

Marketers are indeed the third head of a beast that pollutes our society and culture with its excrement. Historically, marketing was relegated to tasks performed by sales departments within companies but that was before the modern Free Market theory took completely over and nearly every company sought to one day be publicly traded. Before this, American companies were privately owned by individual people who conceived great ideas that they themselves labored to make successful. As a result of companies being born in this way, there was more than the acquisition of wealth as a goal of corporate leadership. The product was precious and valuable as a child is to a parent - leadership would not allow it to be exploited, perverted or misrepresented. In those times, people got a job and committed to the company and its product and that job was the one they worked their entire life - the one they retired from with pride. Once corporations began the race to the Free Market where the little guy, with the great idea who turned into something big and successful, is ousted for a board of guys who's only objective is to turn a greater profit each year than the last. The heart of the company and passion for the product is out. Employees become figures on paper that are added, deducted, divided, multiplied or erased as easily as causing strokes of a pen.

How do you increase profits year after year with a product that might not necessarily be changing or improving year after year in order to justify the increase in sales? You fire the in-house marketers and bring in the professional Lying...in mean...Marketing Agencies who will find a way to embellish the value of the product or convince people that there is a need for the product where there is none. The end result of Marketing efforts is that consumers are often misled into purchasing things they don't need/don't work as claimed, consumers have to purchase many times over the same product until they finally acquire one that lives up to its marketed claims, income and valuable resources are squandered, consumers become jaded and untrusting of corporations, American products lose value on international markets (recall what you think when you see "made in Taiwan" marked on something), businesses lose money litigating claims against them as a result of marketing misrepresentations, people are sometimes harmed as a result of embellished or omitted details about products, etc., etc.

Anywho, I think I'm vented on this one.