Marketing Morality (according to Seth Godin)

Posted by Dave CollinsDigital Marketing

Seth Godin has caused me to raise my eyebrows again.

“Marketing (the use of time and money to create a story and spread it) works. Human beings don’t make rational decisions, they make emotional ones, and we’ve seen time and again that those decisions are influenced by the time and money spent by marketers.

So, assuming you’ve got no argument with that (and if you’re a marketer who doesn’t believe marketing works, we need to have a longer discussion…) then we get to the next part of the argument.”

I have an argument with that. I like Seth, and his ideas are extremely interesting. But is that his definition of marketing? “The use of time and money to create a story and spread it”?

Time and money? Create a story?

At the most basic level, isn’t marketing the link between the product and the customer?

The rest I agree with:

“We’re responsible for what we sell and how we sell it. We’re responsible for the effects (and the side effects) of our actions.”

I couldn’t agree more.

Which is why we have the following policy on our website:

We reserve the right to refuse to work with any application that we are not comfortable with. This may include (but is not limited to) adult, gambling, lottery, fortune telling, applications that are based on unsound principles, applications promoting violence of any kind, and any application that we deem unfit.

In addition, we will not work with any software that we feel will not benefit from our services. This may include (but is not limited to) software that we feel will not sell, software that is poorly implemented or software offering no competitive advantage.

There is morality in marketing. We’re not all pushing cigarettes.

Marketing Morality

Get the Google Demystifier. Unique ideas for your business.