Why I Love Marketing

I had a conversation with my brother over the weekend about why we love marketing.  He graduated with a degree in marketing and we talked about some of the reasons why he wanted to get into the field.  As a designer, I was instantly thrust into the field the minute I landed my first job out of college and it lead to me later pursuing a MBA in Marketing.  Marketing fascinates us.  It is truly fascinating to see how wording a message slightly differently or changing a color scheme can have a significant impact on sales or any other measured result.  Marketing, plain and simple, is manipulation and can be used in any aspect of life.  It is manipulation to get a desired result.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not in love with marketing because I like manipulating people, but because I am fascinated by human behavior.  When I was a kid I used to people watch while I quietly waited for my mom to finish running her errands.  I liked to watch the way people interacted, the different tones in voices, facial expressions and body language cues to spin stories in my head about those people and their lives.  As an adult, I am curious as to what makes people respond and act in certain ways to various stimuli.  I analyze myself all of the time to figure out why I am upset about something, or enamored by it.

Marketing takes all of this information and combines the necessary stimuli to get the needed result.  It is a powerful tool that like a superhero with special powers, can be used for good or for evil.  Evil would be selling you a knowingly defective or harmful product for the pure sake of making money.  It can be used for benevolent good by helping a charity create awareness and the means to enact change.  It can be used to help you land a job or a significant other – both of those could be for bad or for good.

Once I entered the world of marketing, I never looked at anything the same.  Sometimes I feel a bit paranoid because I feel that I can see the marketing behind almost everything that is presented to me.  I follow the marketing trends of different brands almost in the same way a stock analyst follows stocks or a groupie follows a band.  Well, maybe not quite that bad.  I am constantly saying, “Oh, I see what they are doing and where they are going with that.  Pretty smart!”  I guess in some ways the people watching I did as a kid, morphed into brand marketing watching.

Marketing is like a secret super power that in the wrong hands can be a weapon of destruction.  In the right hands, it can be a powerful tool for good or just keep a roof over your head.  That juxtaposition fascinates me!