Where Did Everything You Know About Marketing Come From?

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Where did everything you know about marketing come from? How would you react if you found out that everything you knew about marketing was a fraud? A sham? How would you operate differently, if you did not have everything you think you know about marketing to lean on?

Well I'm here to tell you that it's all true. All those meetings you go to - in companies large and small - old and new - where you talk about and rationalize strategies utilizing terms such as Alpha Males and Alpha Females, Early Adapters, Late Adapters, Thrivals and Rivals, Adverturers and Basics, Generation X and Generation Y, those who Cocoon and those who do not. It is all a sham. A scam. Or as George Parker would say, "An AdScam. The horror."

I have been and my father before me a pioneer in advertising and marketing. Before any of the above existed we watched in amazement as we, the rival companies that sprouted up (for example SRI's Values & Attitudes Lifestyle Studies were just knock offs of our Culturally Influential Consumer Groups) (and focus groups an offshoot of our orginal Assays Product Investigation Circles) sold the next big thing to clients that never realized all of this was just made up by four guys sitting around a room, or a couple of people sitting in a closet trying to think of new ways to make money. So that they could have you believe that they were the only ones with the phone lines to God on Fridays.

Where would you be if you had none of this made-up-crutch to lean on. I'd tell you where you'd be. As a marketer and advertiser you'd be much better off. Go out and start thinking for yourself - and stop thinking what someone else already thought.