This blog has nothing to do with a fact that I need money and I'm determined to earn it online. The amount of ads placed all over it is completely incidental and I have no idea how they got here in the first place. I'm totally not trying to sell space and writing skill to the highest bidder and I am disgusted by all sorts of marketing strategies and manipulations. If you share those interests and think we may have something to offer each other, read on.

Tuesday 3 May 2011

The art of selling

There must be something to the art of selling, some knack that I'm afraid I'll never get. 

Think logically for a while.  What else is there to marketing than creating a big bullshit and pushing it to people?  The not-exactly-lie-but-not-an-honest-truth-either type of bullshit.  Oh, there are paragraphs for a direct lie in an ad (aren't there???) but what about the indirect one?  Nobody cares. 

Basically someone saying that his product is the best in the world must be either a giant egomaniac or a liar.  As simple as that.

The whole sector of marketing is all about manipulation.  About researching new ways of manipulating people (that is - you) into parting with their money.  Nobody cares is you've had a delicious breakfast or have broadened your horizons.  Once the 'paying' bit is done, nobody gives a shit. 

Just think about it for a second - there's a whole sector out there whose main aim is to deceive you.  To lie to you.  They are well and kicking, they get government grants for scientific development etc, marketing is considered an honourable and successful career.  Yet its whole point is develop new ways in which to lie to you so that you don't realise you're beaing lied to.  Ah, wouldn't that be a perfect ad, when you have no idea why, but you simply have to buy THE thing.  While the marketing guys know perfectly well why, sit and count the cash.

It's all perfectly legal, it's all considered perfectly normal, nobody rebels or argues.  And it's not happening 'somewhere', it's happening here and now, in your home, in mine, on your TV, when you switch on your Internet, when you walk out to the street.  It's all there.  And nobody sees there's something wrong with it.

May it be that we, as a species, simply enjoy being manipulated?  That our TV-softened brains are not able to handle the world without bullshit anymore?