Somewhat experimentally “re-blogging” this piece I wrote for a class. The topic: the importance of digital marketing to you, personally and/or professionally. I spent far too much time on it, tried to fit in more thoughts than I should have, and have likely weirded out some strangers. In other words, I’ve experienced that old familiar blogging feeling all over again.
I’ve come quite a ways regarding marketing. This tweet from four and a half years ago pretty well sums up my prior feelings:
I would have summarized this revulsion as follows:
- Companies compiling my (meta)data is creepy
- The endless methods of scraping evermore information about consumers as means of maximizing profits is greedy
- Secretly studying people, for the sake of appealing to their tastes with advertising techniques, is despicable (akin to sneakily learning everything about a desired romantic partner to convince her or him you have loads in common, as in the 2004 film “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”).
- Mindless profit increase—in the name of “fiduciary responsibility”—and the accompanying increase of resource consumption, degrades the soul and the planet.
Frankly, I do still feel those aspects of marketing are “gross,” and if anything these vile efforts have only ramped up since I expressed my disgust years back.
Supposedly…
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Matthew t Day 