> I don't think telling people the product you created to serve their need is inherently evil.
Of course it isn't evil, but this is not what marketing is doing - and claiming so amounts to a motte-and-bailey defense of an industry that's rotten to the core and quite openly malicious towards their fellow human beings.
"I am just saying the idea of marketing is not inherently evil."
And probably most of us, including me, would agree. The problem is when the market is saturated with goods compared to buyers so that more aggressive methods - read: lies and subtle psychological tactics - are used to convince those buyers they need this or that product when they actually don't. Which becomes even more evil when the product is something potentially harmful such as unneeded food, medicines, anything that will be soon thrown away creating more pollution, etc.
The problem isn't marketing by itself, but the total disregard for moral issues that can and will make it harmful once overproduction and saturated markets get us to a point where lying is the only way to keep businesses alive.
I won't go so far as to say there are zero companies doing ethical marketing, but I am convinced there are very few of them - simply because ethical marketing is at severe competitive disadvantage to unethical one.
This is marketing at its real. As practiced.
> I don't think telling people the product you created to serve their need is inherently evil.
Of course it isn't evil, but this is not what marketing is doing - and claiming so amounts to a motte-and-bailey defense of an industry that's rotten to the core and quite openly malicious towards their fellow human beings.