Is Marketing Manipulation?
Truth is Stranger (and More Marketable) Than Fiction
If you’re here, maybe it is.
“Marketing” and “Manipulation” both start with “m” making a meaningful mental model where there’s really just a shared consonant. Your brain tells you there’s something important about the fact that the two words are alliterative. But really they just both start with “m.”. . and that’s it. That’s all.
And what’s with the hanging question in my title? Why can’t I just answer it? Why can’t I just add “Yes!” or “No!” or “It depends on whether you’re selling Kale or Coke,” or something that doesn’t leave you in suspense feeling like you need to read a blog post to resolve the tension you feel? It might save us both a few minutes of valuable time.
It Totally, Definitely Is
I might as well admit at the outset that sometimes (often? usually?) marketing is manipulative. It sets up a situation in your mind that can’t possibly be true in reality in order to get you to buy something you don’t need - or even want. A lot of beer, cigarettes, and enterprise software has been sold this way by unscrupulous marketers looking for any possible way to get customers to part with their money.
Will beautiful women really want to be near me if I smoke Camels? Is the migration to Oracle’s database really going to be “seamless?”
Absolutely not. But the ads make you feel that way by deftly intertwining ideas and images until you think Clydesdales and Christmas have anything at all to do with cheap beer. Just because the ERP vendor found an honest-looking customer with a fancy engineering title who (for the low, low price of a week at the Four Seasons and box seats to the Braves game) was willing to say nice things about them doesn’t mean everything she says is gospel.
Except When It’s Not
Funny thing, though. I’ve been working on positioning tech (among other things) for twenty years now and when you get the message right it feels a lot less kitschy and manipulative than when you get it wrong.
Here’s the tell: when you get messaging wrong - when you’re really just pulling the manipulative levers - you don’t want the customer to ask any more questions. Because as soon as you have to explain why supermodels and nicotine go together the gig is up. It’s clear to everyone that your marketing was just a skin pulled over the alien cockroach of your product.
On the other hand, when you get the marketing message right, you want the customer to ask more questions, because the simple, digestible, red pill of your top-level market position leads to a whole matrix of additional supportive details. The further the customer digs, the more she digs your product. The more she finds to support and expand your simple nugget of a tagline. If the customer keeps tugging on the thread, then she soon finds a whole garment - which, if she’s dressed like most women in beer ads, might be quite useful.
The difference between ethical and manipulative messaging is a question of honesty. Does your product really, truly deliver on the promise you make, such that you’re willing - eager - to expand on the details or do you feel the need to get hand-wavey about the product behind the green curtain. If a customer has the gall to probe what you mean by “Custom AI Model” even though it’s scrawled all over your homepage, do you feel the least urge to obfuscate?
Dull and Honest?
Good marketing messaging is honest, but that doesn’t mean it has to be dull. In fact, it’s a disservice to customers if it is. It’s a disservice not just because it’s boring but because it won’t get read which means a good product (a product which could solve a real problem) won’t get used or won’t get used properly.
Let me unpack that.
If you, as a marketer, set out on a quest to make your messaging as prosaic as possible - just the facts, ma’am, just the bare, unvarnished truths without any attempt to pretty them up or make them a little more appetizing or interesting - then you might be honest, but you’d also be insufferably dull. Dull, even if your product is exciting.
For example, here’s the un-sexiest pitch for Strava I can come up with on short notice:
“We let a person who likes biking do data entry to add a personal profile and track rides, and then connect that profile with other people’s profiles who like biking.”
Wake me up when you’re done talking.
Or VMWare:
“Operating systems can run on our software as if it was hardware.”
Hmmm…Yeah…it’s hard to describe VMWare without it sounding cool.
I’d like to think the reason I’m having a hard time coming up with dull pitches is some innate ability, but the reality is that language is inherently lively and the use of a cool product is inherently engaging and interesting. When you combine them, it’s almost easier to create interesting, lively messaging than dull, strictly-factual messaging.
And the remarkable thing is that lively, interesting marketing is also better for the customer. It’s better because it engages the customer’s imagination and creativity and spurs him on to take action toward his goals.
The Dawn of Marketing
To illustrate, let me go waaaayyy back in the history of marketing. Imagine you were marketing a round stone to a primitive tribe.
You could just keep things dull and factual:
“Here’s a heavy object which is perfectly round.”
Or you could suggest use cases and benefits:
“You can roll it on a flat stone and grind grain - feeding your family.”
“You can chip holes in two of them, put them on a strong, straight stick, and use them to roll heavy things from place to place - giving you mobility.”
“You can use a big one as a secure door for your cellar - keeping out bears, badgers, and other critters.”
You might think these use cases would be obvious, but think again. People spent thousands of years using millstones before they started using wheels even though you’re literally, factually, rolling a wheel when you’re grinding grain with a millstone. The bow and arrow (a pointed stick on another stick with string) was invented thousands of years after the spear (a pointed stick), even though people had been staring at all the ingredients the whole time.
It took people a few thousand more years to figure out that the pleasant, twangy sound your hunting bow makes when you pluck the string might really turn into something someday.
The difference between rolling a millstone and rolling a primitive cart?
Marketing. And a little engineering.
If only some primitive marketer could have made a cave painting of millstones on an axle, we might have those flying cars by now.
Because marketing, when done honestly and ethically, doesn’t manipulate in the negative sense we usually use that word. Rather, it makes what’s possible both plausible and engaging. It plants an idea that leads to solved problems and real, material benefits for your customer.
Good marketing is simple, intriguing, and emotionally resonant, but it’s also honest, helpful, and genuinely insightful. If you want to get technical, then in the strictest sense of the word, even good, ethical marketing does “manipulate” in that it moulds, directs, and changes our thinking, but it does so in a way that helps your customers feed their families, gain upward mobility, and maybe even kill the mammoth that was trying to kill them. And if that’s manipulation, then sign me up for it.