George Kao critiques common marketing metaphors—war, predator/prey, dating, and religious conversion—as dehumanizing and ethically troubling. He proposes healthier alternatives (marketing as farming and as developing friendships) that emphasize nurturing, consent, education, and mutual care, and urges marketers to avoid manipulation and 'indoctrination'.
I think the reason why so many people dislike marketing and sales is because the foundational metaphors are not ones that we would typically use to treat other people. So marketing really has a couple of foundational metaphors. One is marketing is like war. I mean, really, if you look at Madison Avenue, the big advertising agencies that are trying to dominate market share, from what I've heard, some of these agencies actually have their planning rooms, their strategy rooms are called war rooms because they're trying to beat the competition. They're trying to capture our mindshare and dominate the market. And so this is why we feel that there's something not quite right with how marketing and marketers and marketing companies treat us. They treat us like we are lemmings, to be conquered and to be dominated and directed. Another metaphor that is popular with Internet marketing is the idea of predator and prey. We as consumers are like the prey and they, the marketers are like the predators. They are trying to give us bait for opting in, for getting our email address. They literally call it a bait. Okay, what's your bait? What's your free bait that you're giving out? They talk about trip wires. So when we buy something that's low price, it's considered a trip wire so that they can then use higher priced items to try to get us to spend more money. I've become so accustomed to it that it's so obvious to me whenever I see much of marketing is predatory. It's trying to trick us and persuade us against our own will sometimes to buy stuff. This is why we feel uncomfortable with it. Another analogy for marketing that sometimes I've been guilty of using this analogy, but I'm going to stop using it. It's this thought of that it's kind of like dating. We're trying to first go on a first date and then after that, you know, go on a weekend outing and then get married. But sometimes the whole dating analogy can also be predatory. I mean, the whole dating industry, a lot of people feel like there's, it's not quite ethical and I don't know a whole lot about that industry, but that's what I've, that's what I've heard. So let me give you a healthier metaphor for marketing. I can actually think of two and you can use either one that feels right to you. One metaphor is marketing as farming instead of hunting. Right, Hunting the predator. So marketing as farming is. Imagine you are planting seeds and then you are nurturing those seeds and watering them. You're taking care of a farm, you're taking care of plants and then when it's the right time and then you harvest, you don't try to force things by pulling the young plant from the ground and checking. It's like, how come you're not growing faster? How come you're not ready to convert? Oh, that's what I was going to say. Another unhealthy marketing metaphor is it's like a religious conversion, right? So they're talking about literally, what can we do to convert more visitors into clients? We're talking about how can you indoctrinate? Literally, Marketers use this term indoctrination as what they're trying to do. When you first sign up to the email list, they send you a series of emails called indoctrination. They're trying to indoctrinate you into their framework and etc. And I understand and I respect the idea of education, but I really don't like the idea that somehow we're trying to, that we have the one and only way. And, and we're trying to make everybody else who signs up to our list believe in our one and only way and then treat us like gurus so that we can totally control their minds and control their behaviors. Right. This is why I always tell people, I don't want to be anybody's guru. I want you to have the most free will that you can make your decision. I want to educate you from just, this is what I believe, this is what I've seen to be true. But you need to take whatever you learn from other people and from your own life experience to make your own decisions as a result. So back to a healthier metaphor. Farming is a healthy metaphor. So think about that. And also another metaphor that I've been playing with is this idea of marketing as making friends, marketing as developing friendships. It's just a nice feeling to it. We don't try to convert our friends into particular religions. I know some people try to do that. But we don't try to dominate our friends and make them think just the way we do. We try to be there for our friends, we try to be helpful to our friends and we try to invite friends as to things that are fun, you know, together. Right. To kind of invite them into an experience together because we care and we believe that they're going to have a good time and that together we're going to have fun together. So I'll say more in the notes below this video, but I just wanted to kind of share these metaphors and hopefully you'll find one that feels really good to you and that will help you to shape your marketing activity going forward so that your audience enjoys your presence even more.
