#When Marketing Undermines Security

Politicians can promise anything to get elected as senators or deputies, because nothing happens to them if they break their promises. But to a certain extent, marketers do the same, with impunity.

Consumers should be able to hold them accountable, but we are talking about corporations’ marketing, and they have cornered the market — what could anyone do about it? Grab a gun, like Michael Douglas’s character in ‘Falling Down’, when he threatened at gunpoint the employees of an American fast food network because the food they brought him looked much worse than advertised? As far as I know, Americans have the constitutional right to bear arms, but only to defend their property, not to fight deceitful marketing, and perhaps this is why the film’s screenwriter chose not to make an example of him, but to have him killed at the end.

Anyhow, marketing now comes up with solutions welcomed by management, but inefficient in the market, which reveals not only marketing’s weakness, but also that of management. For a marketing strategy to be valid, it has to be intensive, not extensive. This means that when a product does not exist in a market where it is introduced, no matter how much advertising it gets, marketing has virtually no merit. It shows its capabilities when it succeeds in increasing sales in a saturated market. Only in such circumstances can we talk about efficient strategies and about winning market share.

Unfortunately, it’s now trendy to devise cross-selling strategies. For instance, a credit is packaged with life insurance and a private pension - like a good book with two bad ones. Or those who buy food are offered vouchers for perfumes. Why don’t such strategies work? Because there’s a crisis, and most purchases are consumer goods.

It is worth mentioning how pretentious it is to talk about products being sold on the market; this gives the impression of abundance. Actually, the few products available are similar to the point of being identical. Meanwhile, the companies pour huge resources into marketing. They unfold expensive campaigns for promoting “new” products, hoping to consolidate their brand identity and stand out from the other market players. The marketing discourse has almost entirely replaced the consistency of the products and services.

And why are marketing lies allowed to go unpunished? Because, instead of allowing buyers the resources to show their preferences among a large variety of goods, the politicians take those resources using taxes and redistribute them to their cronies. There goes the freedom of choice; instead of seven or eight competing companies in a segment, only two are left, so the variety of products shrinks and, after the resources are taken and distributed using force, we note that the marketing discourse is the carbon copy of the political one.

So resources are offered and distributed to marketing or political PR by the same hand. Both corporate and political marketing eventually take advantage of the flaws of democracy and work with majorities. What can you do when you want a better product, the discourse says it is so, then when you buy it you see it’s not, and there isn’t a better one? The solution is not to buy it at all, so that you don’t “acknowledge” it as merchandise; and remember to tell the salesclerk that the product worthy of that name was sold 30 years ago. And for politicians, the solution is similar: don’t vote, so that you don’t endorse their kind.

Neither corporate marketing nor politics should work on simple majorities, but on marginal utility. Because society is made up of individuals, not of lined-up soldiers; the latter make up armies.

And precisely because we are talking about individuals free to choose, not about regimented crowds, both marketers and politicians should be charged when they lie.

When will the parties work on doctrines, political and economic ones? It’s hard to say, but until then we see all parties avail themselves of the fact that Romania is a welfare state. No matter if they label themselves left or right, the parties use this term to get the right of initiative.

That’s why we cannot talk about doctrines or parties, but just about interest groups. Because - I say that again - those who call themselves politicians unanimously claim that Romania is a welfare state. They claim that they want to enact this constitutional provision, which allows them to practice moral hazard and adverse selection with their own interests in mind.

Considering all this, it’s not so hard to see that groups not bound by ideology look more like crime syndicates than like political organizations. Gone is the past when people with similar ideas on a matter would cooperate, and it was called a party. Political discourse and newspaper columns were meant to persuade. And there were few reasons to believe that someone was unable to convince, if their position was correct and their ideas healthy. This was the standpoint of the framers of constitutional law in the early 19th century.

Nowadays, sadly, the situation is radically different from the times of interwar politicians. They started from ideals, whereas now we only see personal and group interests. They present them as the national interest, while what we actually see is a mere marketing act.

The similarity of politics and marketing is obvious. They virtually have the same modus operandi. But that’s not the worst thing; the most damaging is the distortion of supply and demand by marketing. That’s why our societies are increasingly corporate, and the employees affected by the suppression of competition look more and more like little robots.

There’s where the second distortion by marketing occurs. It sets up hierarchies. It arranges people, subdued, at their places, including those who work in fundamental disciplines that form the basis of social progress. Mathematicians, for instance, are turned into data analysts put to work for marketing results. Instead of the invisible hand guiding the market based on demand and supply, and marketing possibly serving the market or those who provide qualitative leaps in societies, marketing takes center stage and we suddenly see form dictating substance.

In plain words, the prostitution that is marketing tries by all its actions to prevail throughout society, because it leads.

The lack of morality is connected precisely to that distortion of the supply and demand relationship. Equally harmful, the prostitution sets up value scales.

In any form, prostitution has a big problem with democracy, and especially with meritocracy, because it introduces a subpar organization. Neither Communist nor capitalist systems see prostitution as a key element. On principle, those systems either tolerate or deny it, but they do not give it a decisive position, although marketing insists on promoting it in every system.

Unfortunately, those systems fail to show perfectibility, and this is exactly why marketing takes advantage and imposes prostitution. It’s not clear how those systems will develop, and it is precisely this uncertainty that marketing exploits in order to become a force. As things are now, it’s not yet obvious whether marketing is constructive or destructive, but something that defies the laws of nature would rather fit the latter.

The decision to replace marketing as a development node, both economically and politically, pertains to security. It’s ludicrous for a future scientist to work as a data analyst, and generally a less intelligent person cannot evaluate one with superior intellect. The qualities that make a smart person valuable are obstructed by the intellectually inferior marketing executive. Taleb’s warning is clear: over the long term, you are more likely to fool yourself than others. Thus, societies are now maneuvered by actors who make them run riding the brakes.

And because I mentioned before the ‘lined-up soldiers’, the army, as an institution of the state, should understand this perfectly and remember what a military organization does when it senses danger and goes on the defensive. The army protects the state construction, and by virtue of this prerogative its duty is to identify and annihilate the threats to security.