The other day, I had an interesting conversation with one of my roommates about marketing. We argued about marketing ethics, and how it can affect one's judgement. I ultimately left our conversation unfulfilled, seeking a more definitive answer to our question, "is marketing inheritely evil?"
My argument is yes, marketing is evil. It attacks our personal autonomy and self-determination. Marketing has a huge impact on people. An advertisement is a carefully crafted, widely broadcasted piece of propaganda, a distortion of reality intended to persuade. On the scale of mass marketing, this requires great responsibility.
In a perfect world, however, I would tend to think that marketing is not evil. Marketing can be used for great things, such as promoting charities, environmental responsibility, social justice, and public health.
But, in a capitalist society, marketing is weaponized as a tool to prioritize profit over well-being. Many companies enlist the use of predatory marketing, encouraging over-consumption, creating artificial desires, and sometimes targeting vulnerable groups. A perfect example of this is the e-cigarette company, JUUL. They received a ton of backlash over smoking ads that led many children to begin using e-cigarettes, also called vapes. There is still an ongoing epidemic happening because of these advertisements and their effect on children.
This raises the question: Is marketing evil because our current system makes it so, or is it rooted in the very core nature of it?
I argue that marketing, if successful, ultimately converges to a state where it is evil--therefore, the very core of marketing is evil. Marketing by nature seeks to persuade. Behavioral psychology demonstrates that the most effective marketing campaigns bypass rational thought and instead target emotions, fears, social status, and more. In any context where influence is valued, the arms race for attention will eventually devolve into manipulation, as it is much more effective than rational logic.
Free will and determinism is one of my favorite subjects to discuss. I wrote an entire essay on free will and determinism as an inter-textual analysis between Hamlet and Star Wars in highschool. I would include a link to this paper, but unfortunately, it has been lost to time.
A question I have often asked myself when walking through a store or shopping online is whether I willingly chose this product or not. Marketing doesn't necessarily completely erase free will, but it does greatly constrain it. When you walk down the aisle, a large portion of your choices have already been made for you. Things like product placement, shelf height, color psychology, and ads you see on your phone all influence which product you pick off the shelf. When you physically grab the item, it may seem like you made the choice, but did you really? How much of that interaction was already decided for you?
This same concept applies to your internet browsing. It may seem like we choose what to engage with, but carefully engineered algorithms determine everything you see to maximize screen time, therefore increasing the number of ads you view, increasing the profit for the company. These algorithms are slowly trained based on what you interact with to serve content that perfectly matches your interests. At what point does the algorithm start making decisions for you?
In modern times, people are born into a world of marketing. You cannot drive down the street without seeing an advertisement. A single advertisement might not have much influence, but over a lifetime, marketing reshapes what we think we need, creating artificial desires. When exposed to advertisements repeatedly, we begin to associate those feelings with consumption. For example, promises of beauty, weight loss, social status, etc. The first time you buy something might feel like self-expression, but as marketing continues pushing these assocations, it becomes less of what you desire and more of what you've been taught to desire. A simple example of this is authority bias. Authority bias is our tendency to be greater influenced by figures of authority. When advertisements use celebrities, they are encouraging us to buy the product simply because an authority figure endorses it. Do you really want this product, or is it just the assocation with an authoritative figure that makes you want it?
The perfect example of autonomy-erosion is brand loyalty. Brand loyalty demonstrates the effects of long-term marketing. At first, you might buy a product because of its quality. Over time, the company will invest in emotional advertising to connect their products to your identity so that you're no longer choosing a product, but an identity. Examples of this kind of marketing include rewards systems, membership perks, and the creation of an artificial community. These companies use marketing to psychologically condition you to choose their product over any other through emotional responsess, past experiences, and subconscious associations. They alter your perception of what is important and what is desirable, shaping your choices without you realizing it.
Marketing is a powerful tool that shapes much of our world, for better or for worse. It can be used for great applications, such as public health, environmental change, social justice, and so on. However, it seeks to influence, and when influence is the ultimate goal, the line between persuasion and manipulation becomes blurred.
As consumers, it is important to be aware of the inner machinations of the marketing machine. By recognizing the subtle ways in which our autonomy is changed, we can better navigate the modern consumeristic world and reclaim some control of our choices. The question still remains if marketing is inherently evil, but evil is in the eye of the beholder.