Basta

Lately  I have been seeing an increase in "Zen"-branded products and services. I think it's just marketers trying to cash-in on the rise of secular Buddhism among well-off Westerners and some perceived "exotic" or mystical aura of Zen (which really couldn't be further from the truth, as Zen is the most pragmatic and down-to-earth thing out there). This has got me thinking about the marketing trade and some morally suspect aspects of it.

Obey

Don't let your kids major in Marketing

That's an odd recommendation coming from someone like me who works in a B-school. And, to be fair, it's not all of marketing that is suspect. The main problem seems to be with "Promotion" (i.e., advertising). And that's just one of the "4Ps of Marketing" (the others are Product, Price, and Placement).

In the daily environment we are surrounded by so much constant promotional advertising that it's hard to imagine a world without it.

Obey! First-world country

Art instead? Third-world country

And most of it seems to have one purpose: to make you feel dissatisfied. So unhappy that you are willing to open your wallet to make the malaise go away. Most advertising carries a message (either explicit or implicit) that you are currently inadequate or lacking (or you are in danger of becoming so very soon), and that this pain can only be remedied by buying our product. Or, in the terms of a recovering philosopher, the fetishism of commodities and the investment of inanimate objects with transcendent value beyond their utility, by randomly correlating the product with sexual desire and decadence, creating new insecurities the product might alleviate, associating the product with social status or celebrity, or with popular social movements. None of which is rational.

So the Promotion side of marketing is basically creating desires and fears - making people sufficiently unhappy that they will be willing to part with their money to buy some useless crap that promises to take the pain away (make your appearance marginally acceptable, make you less unpopular, give you a brief chemical high, distract you temporarily from the many dissatisfactions of samsara). Imagine, earning your living by giving people even more sources of unhappiness than they already have! And in many cases, doing so by misleading or deceiving others. Doesn't sound like Right Livelihood to me. Maybe it's not as obviously so as the kinds of extreme examples usually held out: thief, mercenary soldier, heroin dealer, telemarketer. But if you fill your days by creating ads for women's magazines that basically say "if you don't buy our $55 face cream, men will not find you sexually attractive and other women will hold you in contempt", you should not expect to find much peace inside you when you finish your day's work.

Really, aren't there already enough real wants and desires, with simple and profound pleasures to be had when they are filled? Do we really need to create more artificially?

There once was a man being chased by a hungry tiger. Running for his life, he came to the top of a tall cliff, so he started to climb down for safety, using a vine growing from a crack in the cliff face. But halfway down he discovered there was another hungry tiger waiting for him below, looking up and snarling at him. Then a mouse came out of the crack and started gnawing at the vine he was clinging to. He looked up in despair. He looked down. He looked at the mouse, already partway through the vine. And just then he noticed little wild strawberries growing from a tiny ledge on the cliff face. He managed to pick one and pop it into his mouth. Ah, taste how sweet the red juice is. How the tiny seeds crunch between your teeth!

Batteries not included

Between the tigers of Birth and Death there are such simple joys to be had. Who would make it their life's work to gnaw away at the vine of another?

The other 3Ps

Sometimes there is a product for sale that is a reasonable necessity of a good life, and where promoting it creates no harm for others. There are nice vegetables available at the campus farmer's market. But you won't know about it unless someone tells you. But clearly that is not the usual case in marketing promotion. Just look around yourself now - how many unnecessary products/services are being pushed at you, and are they being pushed by trying to make you somehow feel inadequate as you currently are?

But that's just Promotion that has so many pitfalls, and such a poor track record. There are three other Ps to the marketing discipline. Perhaps they are not so ethically fraught.

• Product - Some products do meet real needs of people, and are created without causing harm to others (the workers who create them, the consumers of them, or innocent third parties). I have no issue with the development and production of these products. And yet, not all products are so innocent.

  

  Some products just sell themselves!

• Price -"Cost-plus" pricing is charging enough for the product to cover the costs of the raw materials in making it, and to pay a decent wage to everyone involved in making it. Okay, fine (if all of the lifecycle costs are being covered, and not sneakily being passed onto the wider society in the form of pollution or health care many years later). "Value-added" pricing is charging as much as the customer is willing to pay, even if it is much more than the cost-plus price. The customer still fairly values the product more than that amount of cash, and willing trades to have it. Well, okay I guess (provided it was really a free choice, which is not such a simple issue as is sometimes glibly assumed). But, in unwise hands it can go much further than that.
  

  

  It would be wrong to punch Pharma Bro in the face
• Place - Ah, finally! An aspect of Marketing without ethical landmines. Just simply making a useful and fairly priced product conveniently available. What could be the harm in that? There is a  fundamental tenet of economic growth is that idle or underutilized resources should be put to a higher use. But they never quite address the question of what counts as "higher" or who gets to decide. Surely replacing a tract of empty land with a retail place to make product available would count as a higher use, right? What economic value is there to an empty lot?
  

  

  Coming soon: a pink hotel, a boutique, and a swinging hot spot