How Good Advertising Can Teach Us About Ourselves

I think the characteristics that make for great marketing is deeply understanding whatever you’re trying to sell and deeply understanding why people would want to buy it. We all have been exposed to marketing that seems tinny or off-key because it feels like they’re trying to sell us something. The best salesmanship is something that it doesn’t feel like a sales job it feels like someone finally really understands you, really gets you and is talking to your through an add that corresponds to who you are. I think anyone who is a marketing professional knows this and lives by this: the best marketing are those messages that seem to tell me that something about myself that I knew on some level, but haven’t been able to hallucinate until I see this add that tells me: this is the aesthetic or this is the way that you want to live when you’re most proud of yourself.

The art of marketing is attempting to explain to people their own desires in ways that they don’t even know they exist. In many ways when you think about it marketing is this layer that we shouldn’t really need in life, you know themselves and what they want and you have this new product that’s amazing and everyone says I want that product, but I think the art of marketing is understanding how to communicate to people what they actually know and think about themselves, but sometimes aren’t even aware of and explain to them this product can help you in ways that you don’t even understand you need help.