Effective marketing (not just comms, but real positioning and messaging) is why people can find the right products and services, why small businesses can compete, and why entire industries grow. It's unequivocally a good.
If anything, societies suffer when good marketing is absent—because that’s when bad actors fill the void with misinformation, hype, and scammy tactics.
Effective marketing (not just comms, but real positioning and messaging) is why people can find the right products and services
If that's your metric, I can confirm the GP's statement, at least when it comes to online marketing people. Increasingly, I can not find the right products and services online.
> If anything, societies suffer when good marketing is absent—because that’s when bad actors fill the void with misinformation, hype, and scammy tactics.
Except, marketing too is a market for lemons. Scammy marketing outcompetes good marketing. Simple as that.
Scammy marketing can sometimes be effective in the short term, but the problem with it it’s inherently self-limiting.
Deceptive brands burn their audiences, lose customer trust, and either get regulated out of existence or collapse under their own churn rates. Meanwhile, companies that invest in clear, honest positioning, strong customer relationships, and long-term brand value consistently outperform in the long run. Apple, Patagonia, and Tesla aren’t winning because they spam pop-ups.
If marketing were purely a race to the bottom, all successful brands would look like clickbait farms. They don’t.
If anything, societies suffer when good marketing is absent—because that’s when bad actors fill the void with misinformation, hype, and scammy tactics.