It's funny how Carmack realizes that there's so much value that we're just missing, and doesn't realize the WHY of us missing it.
We can't hear about it. There's a cacophony of self interested black hat actors blasting our communication channels with worthless noise. The moment any medium becomes an effective communication channel for valuable things for the wider public, it will be targeted by those self interested black hats for their own gain.
And to be clear, this framing is assuming the best possible motivation of marketers. That they want to inorganically promote their product. When in reality they will lie, manipulate, and insult the general public if it shows statistical gains. They'll play on your fears, or even give you new fears, if it shows statistical gains.
I hated advertisers when I was younger. I'm older now. Still hate them.
Yup, I'm perfectly aware of how valuable it is to a business while absolutely loathing marketing in general. The ROI is clear, but so is the fact that I value my own time and sanity and see marketing as a clear attack on my peace of mind.
There is an aspirational claim of marketing: it's trying to raise brand awareness and make sure customers know that your product is an option when a customer decides to purchase a product in the segment (i.e. When a consumer needs to replace their knives we want to make sure CutsAwesome is on their brand radar)... but marketing in the modern world is much more about creating demand when there was none ("Feeling depressed and lonely? Well drinking our beer will surround you with attractive people!").
I think consumer oriented marketing is an externalized cost on society - we are lowering everyone's productivity so you can sell three extra cans of coke and it's hurting us economically.
You're mostly describing bad or poorly targeted advertising. It's not only a cost on society but also a huge and largely avoidable waste of the businesses' resources. It's frustrating to see so many businesses squandering their limited promotional resources on poorly targeted advertising that is certainly under-performing, if not actively damaging their brand.
It keeps happening because too many rank-and-file marketers are incompetent at their jobs and too many business owners don't understand how to effectively measure and manage the performance of the marketing department.
I think you are conflating marketing with advertising. Advertising is a subset of marketing, but wouldn't include things like:
- Writing clear and effective home pages (e.g. the Get Started button is the most prominent affordance on the https://reactjs.org/ homepage)
- The design of that homepage is marketing. Have you ever felt more comfortable using a product that has a nice website?
- Engineering blogs (e.g. the https://www.backblaze.com/blog/ seems to make it to the HN homepage every few months... they aren't just writing this stuff for fun)
- Making your product easy to get started with isn't strictly marketing, but letting people know that it's easy to get started with sure is (e.g. good documentation)
- Having a good pricing strategy is marketing. (e.g. make three tiers for different customers, but try to steer people to the middle one)
- Having a good pricing discount strategy is marketing. (e.g. AWS is basically free for students because they know who those students will want to use when they are making decisions in the work force in a few years)
A key thing is that not all marketing needs to be done by the marketing department. Marketing is about understanding the market and what will make them use your product. This is important even for software engineers.
Edit: fixed typo above and adding below.
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Also, there are ways of getting the word out that aren't advertising but are done by the same sorts of people. For example, GoPro didn't buy online ads or TV commercials when they were a young company. They gave away GoPros to people doing crazy stuff and had them upload their footage to youtube.
Trader Joes doesn't buy advertising, but mixes up their inventory regularly in order to generate buzz. They'll even take popular items out of production, which I've always suspected is a marketing ploy meant to get people talking about them.
Lamborghini is another example of a company that doesn't make ads, but they fiercely guard their reputation. In fact, their marketing department is hiring right now for someone to manage their "car configurator" (https://configurator.lamborghini.com/), a product that they see as part of marketing.
I think your response is valid. Pedantic, but valid. I read into Carmack's post and interpreted it as him meaning "advertising", and then used the same nomenclature he used. You are right to say that this is imprecise.
Honestly now I'm not sure what he meant by Marketing. I still think he meant "getting the word out" Which would fall on advertising in all it's lovely forms.
This is probably just a semantic difference. In the marketing/advertising industry, “advertising” tends to refer to a subset of channels (banner ads, social media ads, video ads, TV ads, billboards, etc.) while “marketing” refers to the general problem of getting the word out.
I think you’re using “advertising” the way a marketing person would use “marketing”.
I don't think this changes anyone's point, just clarifying what might feel pedantic where there is a term of art associated.
Sorry for being pedantic. Response wasn't directed at you specifically, but at the wider audience, some of whom might not understand the distinction. But my guess is that John Carmack does get the distinction and was intentional with his wording, although obviously I could be wrong :)
But even in advertising, there's a huge variance of ethics. I don't love targeted advertising based on my search history. I'm perfectly fine with my favorite history podcast being able to continue because of casper ads. In that case, casper isn't tracking me specifically... just assuming that history podcast listeners might be good mattress customers.
To be even more precise (or pedantic), "getting the word out" (aka generating awareness) in general is called "Promotion." Advertising is a form of promotion. So is "word-of-mouth" and public relations (aka press relations). All of them fall under the broad responsibility of "Marketing."
People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply you're not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you.
You, however, are forbidden to touch them. Trademarks, intellectual property rights and copyright law mean advertisers can say what they like wherever they like with total impunity.
Fuck that. Any advert in a public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It's yours to take, re-arrange and re-use. You can do whatever you like with it. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head.
You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially don't owe them any courtesy. They owe you. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don't even start asking for theirs.
Copyright law already has fair use provisions that permit you to analyze or criticize advertising, or other works. Mockery is also covered under fair use.
Few ads provide worthwhile raw material for reworking and remixing.
Ads only stimulate overconsumption. They work against the free market (not the best product wins, but the one with the largest advertisement budget). They interrupt us in our work. They make girls feel insecure about themselves. They target children.
Sure, when I want to know more about a product someone recommends. 99.99% of it is unsolicited though. The only forced commercials I think I'm subjected to is during sports events. I have paid opt out of everything else. Let me tell you how annoying 5-7 minutes of commercials are when you've grown unaccustomed to it.
Didn't feel like sarcasm to me. I've seen a heck of a lot of people go through this transition, to the point that this tweet is indistinguishable from common opinions.
Sarcasm that's mostly indistinguishable from real opinions is just intentional miscommunication.
We can't hear about it. There's a cacophony of self interested black hat actors blasting our communication channels with worthless noise. The moment any medium becomes an effective communication channel for valuable things for the wider public, it will be targeted by those self interested black hats for their own gain.
And to be clear, this framing is assuming the best possible motivation of marketers. That they want to inorganically promote their product. When in reality they will lie, manipulate, and insult the general public if it shows statistical gains. They'll play on your fears, or even give you new fears, if it shows statistical gains.
I hated advertisers when I was younger. I'm older now. Still hate them.