Feb 8, 2005

Marketing Cool

by Liberty and Power

Tonight, I'll be speaking in a panel discussion at American University called, "Marketing Cool: The Buying of Young America."

It'll be broadcast live on WAMU FM in the D.C. area and audio webcast here.

There's also a small chance that C-SPAN may televise it.

The debate, as you might guess, is over whether or not evil corporate America is exploiting young people through marketing and advertising and, if so, what we ought to do about it.

My positions will be"not really" and"not a damn thing," respectively.

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Grant Gould - 2/8/2005

Gotta disagree with you there, Radley. "If [marketing is exploiting young people], what we ought to do about it" is not "not a damn thing." The government ought to not do a damn thing, but "we" aren't the government, and that isn't the same as saying "we" oughtn't to do a damn thing about it.

If clever marketing makes people behave irrationally -- the essential claim here, as I read it -- then _we_ ought to be selling marketing-resistance. If the exploitation is real, then the chance to make a buck selling people tools of resistance is real, too.

I think this is one of the biggest unoccupied niches in the market: Selling rationality, and irrationality-resistance. The schools could be doing it, but aren't. There are whole classes of educational and technological tools for avoiding irrational choices that have yet to be invented. So what we ought to be doing about exploitative marketing, if such a thing exists, is building market-based solutions to it.