At the end of the day the purpose of marketing is to get a person to buy into whatever it is that you are trying to accomplish, be it sell a car, get a vote, get a job or even get a girl. I don't think that the antics of marketers are anything new, it has just gotten more sophisticated. The sophistication has led to a point where fMRI scanning is used to see exactly how marketing strategies work within our brains. I am not even going to ask if it is right or wrong because I think it is a nonsensical question - the tools are available and they are being used. Lets take the question of marketing from a different perspective: a guy wants to get a girl: he speaks to all her friends to find out what she likes, what she likes to talk about, what she likes to eat, where she likes to go, what perfume she likes etc. He then goes out an makes all her dreams come true....until they get married and she finds out that they don't actually like the same things etc. ....and this form of marketing is done every day. ...or the job interview, now lets be honest, we all stretch the truth a bit, you won't tell the interviewer about the time you got to work with a terrible hangover and nearly destroyed the network or the time you lost a customer because you were incompetent, no, you'll say you always do your best etc. From the employers perspective, he will tell you that they always tell the truth and that they always keep the customer informed, yet they don't tell the customer that they got in deeper than they should and that they are waiting for an expert to bail them out.

Ok, so, marketers who sell in exteremely sophisticated ways are being slated, but why? Just as it is a girls duty not to sleep with every twit who makes a play, it is a customers duty not to buy into everything that comes his way. Some will say it is unfair for the shop to make the baby section smell of baby powder to make the ladies buy more, why?

The matter becomes problematic when the truth is bent too far, the question is: how far is too far? Take Coke Zero for example - They say that the product doesn't contain any sugar (this is true) - they don't say that it does contain caramel. Is this wrong? or a car company says that their car can get a fuel consumption of 0l/1km under certain circumstances - they don't say that it is when the car is dropped vertically down a mine shaft. So, the problem isn't always in what they say, a lot of time it is in what they don't say. Like a a man sweeping the perfect girl off her feet and forgetting to tell her that he actually has Aids and that he has one year to live or the pharmaceutical company that says a product cures cancer but omits to tell the patient that the drug kills him by destroying his liver.

Ok, so what is the answer, I can't say that I know, but I do know that we want people to buy whatever we sell and that it all comes out in the wash eventually. I think that just as the marketers are getting smarter, the buyer needs to get smarter. If the buyer feels he has been done in then he needs to fight for his rights. As I said before, there is no difference between making a play for a girl and trying to sell a car, it is up to the girl to be mindful of the tactics that are being used and it is up to the car buyer to be mindful too. Now girls, please don't think that I am making the comparison lightly or that I am saying that women are stupid - to the contrary, I think that women learn very quickly to see through the ploys that men use and that the really smart women use those ploys to their own advantage. If the guy wants to shower you with dinners and gifts, that is his parogative, it doesn't mean you owe him anything. And by the same token, if a company claims to give you a FREE holiday, it doesn't mean you have to buy their timeshare.

I think that some people may be upset by these comparisons but I think that it is the way of the world in all things, we get our way by figuring out how to make it attractive to the other party, be it selling, politics, love or even talking the kids into mowing the lawn. Some will say that you shouldn't talk the kids into mowing the lawn, they should just do as you say, tough one, what happens the day you have a stroke and tell them to play in the traffic.

We are all both buyers and sellers at the end of the day. Both buyer and seller beware. Just as a seller can dupe a buyers, so can a buyer dupe a seller.