Since when has our love for marketing been affecting the world?
Just because we didn’t have a word for it, not to mention an industry, does not mean that it didn’t happen.
Why do we assume that all those rules that Seth taught us over the years have been working only in recent times?
What if Adam Smith was not the wisest at his time, but the one who marketed himself the best?
Robert L. Heilbroner on “The Worldly Philosophers” says: “There is a long line of observers before Smith who have approached his understanding of the world: Locke, Steuart, Mandeville, Petty, Cantillon, Turgot, not to mention Quesnay and Hume.” What if they had better ideas of what people should do, but didn’t have a good network, PR skills or luck? When you read Smith’s history, you realize that these things mattered enormously, besides his ideas, talent and devotion.
I like to say that marketing makes the irrational sound rational. This is (not so) bad when it comes to purchasing an expensive phone or car.
This is terrible when it comes to the historical repercussions of not choosing the real bests in history to guide civilization.
This is of course just a supposition, but it makes you wonder where we would be in a world without marketing.
I’m guessing there would have been an Obama long ago.
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Very good point!
We like to assume it’s a survival of the fittest situation when ideas are passed on from generation to generation…the ‘right’ books to read, people to quote, etc etc etc.
But in reality it’s not the fittest (or BEST) ideas that carry on, it’s the ones with the most stickiness, portability and mass appeal. Perhaps world peace could have been ours long ago (doubtful, but possible) if only some long-ignored scrivener would have been listened to instead of, say, Benjamin Franklin, Lou Reed or Chairman Mao.
Fittest is such a cool word
Very good points here. Where would we be in history without all the marketing experts of the last few thousand years? (Some of them who even worked with spades and thumbscrews…)
A world without marketing is an interesting experiment of thought – although it gets hard to imagine pretty fast. If we start thinking about Obama… HE’S a marketing expert for sure (or at least some people very close to him).
I don’t think any moral leader is not a marketing expert. You need to be one for people to follow…….in a marketing filled world, of course.
Marketing was invented with civilization in my opinion, I bet there were cavemen who made their rocks more appealing to throw than his competitors.
Your post reminds me of the injustice that was caused to the inventor Nikola Tesla by many of his fellow scientists such as Thomas Edison who stole his ideas and used their bigger names or better PR skills to publish them as their own.
lol I’m blabbering again, Great Blog! =)
Matthew
Tesla, perfect example.
Thanks for stopping by Matthew, we need to talk because I’m moving to Perth next year.
Aristotle was great at marketing himself. And if you think about it, so was Jesus. They knew how to spread their message with what was available to them at the time. As an architect, I have learned that those that we remember most over time such as Vitruvius, Palladio, and others, is because they knew how to use the tools of the day to spread their message about design. They all wrote manifestos, and that is for what they are most remembered.
This is a great post.
Thank you Gianpaolo, more good examples.