MARKETING ISN’T AS BAD AS IT’S CRACKED UP TO BE.
”Words are not only in open books, they are an open book themselves.” – Spinosa
Marketing is no exception. Although it first appeared (in writing) only some 400 years ago, that doesn’t mean marketing is a recent invention and interest in it even more recent than that. On the contrary, the origins of marketing, and interest in it, date all the way back to when words were fresh on Earth.
In those early days, anybody could dream up a new word, every child could do it, and truth was no exception. But getting people to believe truth not only exists, but in a book you have a copy of, then as now, poses a different challenge entirely. If you’re not sure what I’m talking about, all it takes is give it a try.
I’m not saying that’s how marketing began, all I’m saying is that’s when the original word-masters realized…
– “Most people will not take the trouble in finding out the truth, but are much more inclined to accept the first story they hear.” – Thucydides
– “The one who dares to tell the truth is called at once a lunatic and fool.” – Plato
– “A word after a word after a word is power.” – Margaret Atwood
…long before Thucydides, Plato, and Margaret Atwood put these observations into words. Either way, the race was on for the first story the children — the younger, the better — should hear at school.
Thus began the golden age of storytelling. And with it — “Mirror, mirror on the wall, which is the fairest story of them all?” — the planet’s longest-lasting beauty contest ever. As well as the most divisive and deadliest.
“In comparing various authors with one another, I have discovered that some of the gravest and latest writers have transcribed, word for word, from former works, without making acknowledgment.” – Gaius Plinius the Elder
Guilty as charged. This explains why many believe marketing is a bunch of liars the world would be better without. However, that would be forgetting that lying doesn’t describe marketing.
Lying describes people regardless of what they’re doing with their lives. Religionist, scientist, cook, farmer, shoemaker, or singer, everybody knows from personal experience that when you tell a lie, you are the first to find out.
To exploit, or to help, that is the question, and the answer will not come from marketing.
It is all up to you.
#marketing#storytelling#beginnings#words